History of the Peloponnesian War

And it is I you are angry withal, one, as I think myself, inferior to none either in knowing what is requisite or in expressing what I know, and a lover of my country and superior to money.

For he that hath good thoughts and cannot clearly express them were as good to have thought nothing at all. He that can do both and is ill affected to his country will likewise not give it faithful counsel. And he that will do that too yet if he be superable by money will for that alone set all the rest to sale.

Now if you followed my advice in making this war, as esteeming these virtues to be in me somewhat above the rest, there is sure no reason that I should now be accused of doing you wrong.

"For though to such as have it in their own election (being otherwise in good estate), it were madness to make choice of war; yet when we must of necessity either give way, and so without more ado be subject to our neighbours, or else save ourselves from it by danger, he is more to be condemned that declineth the danger than he that standeth to it.

For mine own part I am the man I was and of the mind I was; but you are changed, won to the war when you were entire but repenting it upon the damage and condemning my counsel in the weakness of your own judgment. The reason of this is because you feel already everyone in particular that which afflicts you, but the evidence of the profit to accrue to the city in general you see not yet.

And your minds, dejected with the great and sudden alteration, cannot constantly maintain what you have before resolved. For that which is sudden and unexpected and contrary to what one hath deliberated enslaveth the spirit, which by this disease principally, in the neck of the other incommodities, is now come to pass in you.