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I assume, men of Athens, that the time for
humoring you and the time for recommending the measures I regard as best are not the same;
for often, I observe, humoring you contrary to one's own judgement has earned more hatred
than opposing at the outset. Now, if you all held the same opinions, I should not have
come forward if you seemed to me to prefer the right course, considering it superfluous to
speak before people doing the right thing of their own accord, nor again, if the contrary
were true, for I should have thought that a lone person like myself was more likely to
misapprehend the best measures than all of you.
Demosthenes with an English translation by Norman W. DeWitt, Ph.D., and Norman J. DeWitt, Ph.D. Cambridge, MA, Harvard University Press; London, William Heinemann Ltd. 1949.
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