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Section 31

To recognize that I am such a man given to the city by the god, consider this: it does not seem human that I should have neglected all my own affairs and endured seeing my household neglected all these years, while always doing your business, approaching each of you privately like a father or an older brother, persuading you to care for virtue. If I derived any profit from this and received pay for my exhortations, there would be some reason in it. But as it is, you yourselves see that my accusers, who have so shamelessly accused me of everything else, could not summon the shamelessness to provide a witness claiming I ever demanded or received pay. I offer a sufficient witness, I think, that I am speaking the truth: my poverty. Perhaps it may seem strange that I give this advice going around privately and meddling in other people's affairs, but do not dare to go before your assembly publicly and advise the city. The reason for this is what you have heard me say many times and in many places: that a certain divine and spiritual voice comes to me, the very thing Meletus mocked in his indictment. It has been coming to me since childhood; it is a voice that, whenever it comes, always turns me away from what I am about to do, but never turns me forward. This is what opposes my involvement in politics. And I think it opposes me very well. For know well, men of Athens, that if I had attempted to engage in politics long ago, I would have died long ago and been of no use to you or to myself. Do not be angry with me for speaking the truth: no man will survive if he genuinely opposes you or any other multitude and prevents many unjust and illegal things from happening in the city. A man who truly fights for justice, if he is to survive even for a short time, must remain a private citizen and not a public one.