Tao Te Ching
Jean-Jules-Antoine Lecomte du Nouÿ
Demosthenes Δημοσθένης
384 – 322 BCE
Orphaned at the age of seven, called “blazing thunderbolt,“ read more than any other ancient orator, and one of the 10 greatest ancient Greek speakers; Cicero said Demosthenes was “the perfect orator” who “stands alone among all.” Self-taught by studying famous speeches and overcoming a serious speech problem by speaking to the sea with pebbles in his mouth; he used his prodigious skills to influence political sentiment attempting to keep Athens free and independent. His group of paid orators were considered one of the least respected professions and presaged the lawyers and professional politicians of our time. He sometimes prepared arguments for both sides in a case and became rich supporting unethical positions he didn’t believe in but wound up suffering and dying for views he was paid to defend. Though exemplifying both the best and worst of the legal profession he helped spawn, he inspired The Federalist Papers, the French Revolution orators, Henry Clay, and Friedrich Nietzsche.
Lineages
Greek Historians / Journalists Politicians
Eras
Western
Egyptian Civilization (3150 – 305 BCE)Greek Civilization (480 – 146 BCE)
The Axial Age, “The Great Leap of Being” (800 – 200 BCE)
Quotes by Demosthenes (7 quotes)
“What we have in us of the image of God is the love of truth and justice.”
Comments: Click to comment
“Small opportunities are often the beginning of great enterprises.”
Comments: Click to comment
“Beware lest in your anxiety to avoid war you obtain a master.”
Comments: Click to comment
“Nothing is easier than self-deceit. For what each man wishes, that he also believes to be true.”
Comments: Click to comment
“Every dictator is an enemy of freedom, an opponent of law.”
Comments: Click to comment
“Success has a great tendency to conceal and throw a veil over the evil deeds of men.”
Comments: Click to comment
“There is one safeguard known generally to the wise, which is an advantage and security to all, but especially to democracies as against despots - suspicion.”
Comments: Click to comment
Quotes about Demosthenes (5 quotes)
“[Demosthenes' style] was wonderfully pleasing to the common people, but by well-educated persons, it was looked upon as mean, humiliating, and unmanly.”
Comments: Click to comment
“Demosthenes, the Athenian demagogue and orator, a man of reckless rhetoric”
Comments: Click to comment
“Demosthenes, a leader such as Greece had never known before and was never to know again. History, indeed, has known few of them... What he did all alone was almost miraculous... he lifted the whole political mess which Plato had turned from as hopeless, out of the corruption in which it was sunk up to a lofty level of patriotism.”
Comments: Click to comment
“Demosthenes far surpassed in force and strength of eloquence all his contemporaries in political and judicial speaking, in grandeur, and majesty all the orators, and in accuracy and science all the logicians and rhetoricians of his day… without all the embellishment and jesting [of Cicero] but of the temperance, thoughtfulness, austerity, and grave earnestness of his temper.”
Comments: Click to comment
“Demosthenes strikes us as a little less than great. He laid the secret of oratory in acting... We are amused by his histrionics, amazed by his self-esteem, confused by his digressions, and appalled by his ungracious scurrility. There is little wit in him, little philosophy. Only his patriotism redeems him, and the apparent sincerity of his despairing cry for freedom.”
Comments: Click to comment
Comments (0)