republic (books 1 - 5)   

ruler of sailors, and not a mere sailor?

That has been admitted.

And such a pilot and ruler will provide and prescribe for the
interest of the sailor who is under him, and not for his own or
the ruler's interest?

He gave a reluctant "Yes."

Then, I said, Thrasymachus, there is no one in any rule who,
in so far as he is a ruler, considers or enjoins what is for his
own interest, but always what is for the interest of his subject
or suitable to his art; to that he looks, and that alone he con-
siders in everything which he says and does.

When we had got to this point in the argument, and every-
one saw that the definition of justice had been completely upset,
Thrasymachus, instead of replying to me, said, Tell me, Soc-
rates, have you got a nurse?

Why do you ask such a question, I said, when you ought
rather to be answering?

Because she leaves you to snivel, and never wipes your nose:
she has not even taught you to know the shepherd from the
sheep.

What makes you say that? I replied.

Because you fancy that the shepherd or neatherd fattens or
tends the sheep or oxen with a view to their own good and not
to the good of himself or his master; and you further imagine
that the rulers of States, if they are true rulers, never think of
their subjects as sheep, and that they are not studying their
own advantage day and night. Oh, no; and so entirely astray
are you in your ideas about the just and unjust as not even to
know that justice and the just are in reality another's good;
that is to say, the interest of the ruler and stronger, and the
loss of the subject and servant; and injustice the opposite; for
the unjust is lord over the truly simple and just: he is the
stronger, and his subjects do what is for his interest, and min-
ister to his happiness, which is very far from being their own.
Consider further, most foolish Socrates, that the just is always
a loser in comparison with the unjust. First of all, in private
contracts: wherever the unjust is the partner of the just you
will find that, when the partnership is dissolved, the unjust
man has always more and the just less. Secondly, in their
dealings with the State: when there is an income-tax, the just
man will pay more and the unjust less on the same amount of
income; and when there is anything to be received the one gains
nothing and the other much. Observe also what happens when
they take an office; there is the just man neglecting his affairs
and perhaps suffering other losses, and getting nothing out of
the public, because he is just; moreover he is hated by his
friends and acquaintance for refusing to serve them in unlaw-
ful ways. But all this is reversed in the case of the unjust
man. I am speaking, as before, of injustice on a large scale
in which the advantage of the unjust is most apparent; and my
meaning will be most clearly seen if we turn to that highest
form of injustice in which the criminal is the happiest of men,
and the sufferers or those who refuse to do injustice are the
most miserable--that is to say tyranny, which by fraud and
force takes away the property of others, not little by little but