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[331c] I deem it impious to apply compulsion,1 unless they are in the grip of the disease of insanity; but if they are living a settled life which is pleasing to them, though not to me, I would neither irritate them with vain exhortations nor yet minister to them with flatteries by providing them with means to satisfy appetites of a sort such that I, were I addicted to them, would refuse to live. So likewise it behoves the man of sense to hold, while he lives, the same view concerning his own State: if it appears to him to be ill governed

1 On the subject of filial piety cf. Plat. Crito 51c, Plat. Laws 717b ff.

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