[122]
Do you not see, gentlemen, do you
not understand, how you would have been chargeable with sheer lunacy in every
one of these instances, if you had carried by vote any such resolution as this?
I say it is not the part of sane men either to put such confidence in a man,
whenever they imagine him to be friendly, as to deprive themselves of all
defence against possible aggression, or, on the other hand, when they regard
anyone as an enemy, to hate him so fiercely that, if he ever wants to reform and
be their friend, they have taken it out of his power to do so. But we should, I
think, carry both our friendship and our hatred only so far as not to exceed the
due measure in either case.
Demosthenes. Demosthenes with an English translation by A. T. Murray, Ph.D., LL.D. Cambridge, MA, Harvard University Press; London, William Heinemann Ltd. 1939.
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