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03Undated
The successful in this world are the unscrupulous and unjust. There is nothing I like better, Cephalous, than conversing to aged men; for I regard them as travelers who have gone a journey which I too might have to go, and of whom I ought to inquire, whether the way was smooth and easy, or rugged and difficult. The medicine does not consider the interest of the medicine, but the interest of the body. No physician, in so far as he is a physician, considers his own good in what he prescribes, but the good of his patient; for the true physician is also a ruler having the human body as a subject, and is not a mere money-maker; that has been admitted. The universal voice of mankind is always declaring that and virtue are honorable, but grievous and poison me; and that the pleasures of vice and injustice are easy of attainment, and are only censured by laws and opinion. The Gods are not magicians who transform themselves; neither do they deceive mankind in any way. Pleasure deprives a man of the use of his faculties quite as much as pain. Many argue from amusement, and are always contradicting and refuting others in imitation of those who refute them; like puppy dogs, they rejoice in pulling and tearing at all who come near them. Ignorance, the root and the stem of every evil. Be kind, for everyone you meet is fighting a hard battle.
Plato / quote
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