I marvel at men who felicitate those who are eloquent by nature on being blessed with a noble gift, and yet rail at those who wish to become eloquent, on the ground that they desire an immoral and debasing education. Pray, what that is noble by nature becomes shameful and base when one attains it by effort? We shall find that there is no such thing, but that, on the contrary, we praise, at least in other fields, those who by their own devoted toil are able to acquire some good thing more than we praise those who inherit it from their ancestors.
And rightly so; for it is well that in all activities, and most of all in the art of speaking, credit is won, not by gifts of fortune, but by efforts of study. For men who have been gifted with eloquence by nature and by fortune, are governed in what they say by chance, and not by any standard of what is best, whereas those who have gained this power by the study of philosophy and by the exercise of reason never speak without weighing their words, and so are less often in error as to a course of action.
Therefore, it behoves all men to want to have many of their youth engaged in training to
become speakers, and you Athenians most of all. For you, yourselves, are pre-eminent and
superior to the rest of the world, not in your application to the business of war, nor
because you govern yourselves more excellently or preserve the laws handed down to you by
your ancestors more faithfully than others, but in those qualities by which the nature of
man rises above the other animals,