1And what is your view about them? Would you call one of them virtue and the other vice?

2Certainly.

3I suppose that you would call justice virtue and injustice vice?

4What a charming notion! So likely too, seeing that I affirm injustice to be profitable and justice not.

5What else then would you say?

6The opposite, he replied.

7And would you call justice vice?

8No, I would rather say sublime simplicity.

9Then would you call injustice malignity?

10No; I would rather say discretion.

11And do the unjust appear to you to be wise and good?

12Yes, he said; at any rate those of them who are able to be perfectly unjust, and who have the power of subduing states and nations; but perhaps you imagine me to be talking of cutpurses. Even this profession if undetected has advantages, though they are not to be compared with those of which I was just now speaking.

13I do not think that I misapprehend your meaning, Thrasymachus, I replied; but still I cannot hear without amazement that you class injustice with wisdom and virtue, and justice with the opposite.

14Certainly I do so class them.

15Now, I said, you are on more substantial and almost unanswerable ground; for if the injustice which you were maintaining to be profitable had been admitted by you as by others to be vice and deformity, an answer might have been given to you on received principles; but now I perceive that you will call injustice honourable and strong, and to the unjust you will attribute all the qualities which were attributed by us before to the just, seeing that you do not hesitate to rank injustice with wisdom and virtue.

16You have guessed most infallibly, he replied.

17Then I certainly ought not to shrink from going through with the argument so long as I have reason to think that you, Thrasymachus, are speaking your real mind; for I do believe that you are now in earnest and are not amusing yourself at our expense.

18I may be in earnest or not, but what is that to you?—to refute the argument is your business.

19Very true, I said; that is what I have to do: But will you be so good as answer yet one more question? Does the just man try to gain any advantage over the just?

20Far otherwise; if he did he would not be the simple amusing creature which he is.

21And would he try to go beyond just action?

22He would not.

23And how would he regard the attempt to gain an advantage over the unjust; would that be considered by him as just or unjust?

24He would think it just, and would try to gain the advantage; but he would not be able.

25Whether he would or would not be able, I said, is not to the point. My question is only whether the just man, while refusing to have more than another just man, would wish and claim to have more than the unjust?