[34]
Of these two qualities, then, justice has the greater1
power to inspire confidence; for even without the
aid of wisdom, it has considerable weight; but
wisdom without justice is of no avail to inspire
confidence; for take from a man his reputation for
probity, and the more shrewd and clever he is, the
more hated and mistrusted he becomes. Therefore,
justice combined with practical wisdom will command
all the confidence we can desire; justice without
wisdom will be able to do much; wisdom without
justice will be of no avail at all.
1 Justice vs. Wisdom;
M. Tullius Cicero. De Officiis. With An English Translation. Walter Miller. Cambridge. Harvard University Press; Cambridge, Mass., London, England. 1913.
The Annenberg CPB/Project provided support for entering this text.
This work is licensed under a
Creative Commons Attribution-ShareAlike 3.0 United States License.
An XML version of this text is available for download, with the additional restriction that you offer Perseus any modifications you make. Perseus provides credit for all accepted changes, storing new additions in a versioning system.