Demosthenes, answered from the texts and cited to the page.
The policy was right and the defeat does not touch it. Athens was asked to choose between resisting a man who was taking Greece piece by piece and accommodating him in the hope of being eaten last. She chose to resist, on my advice, and she was beaten by fortune and by the Macedonian army, not by the argument. A city is not judged by what Heaven assigns it but by what it undertakes.12345
And I believe, men of Athens, that the revelation is not far off, if Heaven be willing 21 and you desirous of it. So long as a man is in good health, he is unconscious of any weakness; but if any illness comes upon him, the disturbance affects every weak point, be it a rupture or a sprain or anything else that is unsound in his constitution.The Public Orations, Vol 1, pp. 105–106
Thus it was Aeschines in whom all their trust was placed; it was with him in their minds that they considered the whole situation; it was with him in their minds that they made the Peace. (To the clerk.) Now read the remainder. (To the jury.) And do you observe for what they trusted him, and what treatment they received. Does it show any resemblance or similarity to what Aeschines predicted in his report?The Public Orations, Vol 1, pp. 170–171
But if he has stripped them all alike of their dignity, their paramountcy, and their independence--nay, even of their free constitutions,[n] wherever he could do so--can it be denied that the policy which you adopted on my advice was the most glorious policy possible? {66} But I return to my former point.The Public Orations, Vol 2
And wherein lies the difference? He who thinks he was born for his parents alone awaits the death which destiny assigns him in the course of nature: but he who thinks he was born for his country also will be willing to die, that he may not see her in bondage, and will look upon the outrages and the indignities that he must needs bear in a city that is in bondage as more to be dreaded than death.The Public Orations, Vol 2
You prove it, moreover, by the life you live, the actions you do, the measures you take --and the measures, too, that you do not take. Is anything being done which seems advantageous to the city? Aeschines is speechless. Has any obstruction, any untoward event occurred? There you find Aeschines, like a rupture or a sprain, which wakes into life, so soon as any trouble overtakes the body.The Public Orations, Vol 2
Contested by the dominant modern reading, which holds that the policy was strategically hopeless and that the accommodationists were right about Macedonian power.