Sean’s Reviews > Gorgias > Status Update

Every form of pandering, whether to oneself or others, whether to large groups or to small, is to be shunned; oratory is to be employed only in the service of right, and they same holds true of every other activity.

That one should avoid doing wrong with more care than being wronged, and that the supreme object of a man‘s efforts, in public and in private life, must be the reality rather than appearance of goodness. Moreover, if a man goes wrong in any way he must be punished, and the next best thing to being good is to become good by submitting to punishment and paying the penalty for one‘s faults.

Right consists in the superior ruling over the inferior and having the upper hand.

Conventions, on the other hand, are made, in my opinion, by the weaklings who form the majority of mankind. They establish them and apportion praise and blame with an eye to themselves and their own interests, and in an endeavour to freighten those who are stronger and capable of getting the upper hand they say that ambition is base and wrong, and that wrong-doing consists in trying to gain an advantage over others.

It is better to suffer wrong than to do wrong.