For I have been taught both by hearsay and experience, that most of your advantages have escaped you, from unwillingness to do your duty, not from ignorance.
Demosthenes: “For I have been taught both by hearsay and experience, that most of your advantages have escaped you, from unwillingness…”
Editor's note · Context
Addressing the Athenian assembly, he attributes past failures to a lack of civic duty rather than a lack of understanding.
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I could have wished, knowing the advantage of good counsel to you, I were equally certain of its advantage to the counselor: so should I have spoken with more satisfaction.
And surely we must suppose, that Paeonians and Illyrians, and all such people, would rather be free and independent than under subjection; for they are unused to obedience, and the man is a tyrant.
As a house, a ship, or the like, ought to have the lower parts firmest, so in human conduct, I ween, the principle and foundation should be just and true.
Wherefore, Athenians, we must be exceedingly careful of our future measures, that by amendment therein we may efface the shame of the past.





