Demosthenes: “If, seeing the abundance of commodities and cheapness in your market, you are beguiled into a belief that the state is…”

Such is the truth, spoken with perfect freedom, purely from good-will and for the best: not a speech fraught with flattery and mischief and deceit, to earn money for the speaker, and to put the commonwealth into the hands of our enemies.

Because our city is the only one where liberty is allowed to speak for the enemy, where a man taking a bribe may safely address the people, though they have been deprived of their possessions.

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…

Yea, among these men, some have risen rapidly from poverty to wealth, from meanness and obscurity to repute and honor, while you, on the contrary, have fallen from honor to obscurity, from wealth to indigence.