These are the truths which, if I am not mistaken, you will persuade or compel your poets to utter with suitable accompaniments of harmony and rhythm, and in these they must train up your youth.

Am I not right?
For I plainly declare that evils as they are termed are goods to the unjust, and only evils to the just, and that goods are truly good to the good, but evil to the evil.

Let me ask again, Are you and I agreed about this?
CLEINIAS: I think that we partly agree and partly do not.
ATHENIAN: When a man has health and wealth and a tyranny which lasts, and when he is pre-eminent in strength and courage, and has the gift of immortality, and none of the so-called evils which counter-balance these goods, but only the injustice and insolence of his own nature--of such an one you are, I suspect, unwilling to believe that he is miserable rather than happy.
CLEINIAS: That is quite true.
ATHENIAN: Once more: Suppose that he be valiant and strong, and handsome and rich, and does throughout his whole life whatever he likes, still, if he be unrighteous and insolent, would not both of you agree that he will of necessity live basely?
You will surely grant so much?
CLEINIAS: Certainly.
ATHENIAN: And an evil life too?
CLEINIAS: I am not equally disposed to grant that.
ATHENIAN: Will he not live painfully and to his own disadvantage?
CLEINIAS: How can I possibly say so?
ATHENIAN: How! Then may Heaven make us to be of one mind, for now we are of two.

To me, dear Cleinias, the truth of what I am saying is as plain as the fact that Crete is an island.

And, if I were a lawgiver, I would try to make the poets and all the citizens speak in this strain, and I would inflict the heaviest penalties on any one in all the land who should dare to say that there are bad men who lead pleasant lives, or that the profitable and gainful is one thing, and the just another; and there are many other matters about which I should make my citizens speak in a manner different from the Cretans and Lacedaemonians of this age, and I may say, indeed, from the world in general.