Don't speak of what you haven't done

Promptly to become emotional in the pulpit — instead of acting in actuality — and then to have it seem to the person himself and the audience as if the man had acted. Yes, Plato and Socrates were right: banish poets and also orators from the state.


On the whole, the Greek concept of a philosopher (that is, a thinker in ethical character) is much more appropriate to the communication of the essentially Christian than this spineless concept: an orator, a declaimer — instead of an implementer.

— Søren Kierkegaard