Mercenaries I recommend--and beware of doing what has often been injurious--thinking all measures below the occasion, adopting the strongest in your decrees, you fail to accomplish the least--rather, I say, perform and procure a little, add to it afterward, if it prove insufficient.
In a speech urging action against Philip, Demosthenes advises against grand, unachievable plans, advocating for practical, incremental steps.
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They say that you should keep quiet, though you are injured; but they can not themselves keep quiet among you, though no one injures them.
For this reason he will show us no mercy, if he get us into his power: and therefore you must make up your minds, that the struggle will be one for life and death.
If we admitted the truth of what would be your best possible answer, namely, that all you do is for honor and renown, I wonder what puts it into your head, that you ought from such motives to exert yourself and undergo toil and danger…
But I suppose, you inherit a reputation from your father and grandfather, which it were disgraceful in your own person to extinguish, whereas the ancestry of the state was ignoble and mean.
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