Justice & Law Quote by Plato

Plato is drawing a bright moral line through a temptation as old as expertise itself: the urge to treat intelligence as self-justifying. In his framing, knowledge untethered from justice doesn’t merely fall short of wisdom; it mutates into something colder and more predatory. “Cunning” is an accusation of technique without conscience, a talent for getting what you want rather than discerning what ought to be wanted. The word choice matters. Wisdom suggests a harmonized soul and a properly ordered city; cunning suggests a fragmented person whose mind is sharp but whose aims are crooked.

The subtext is political. Plato’s Athens had watched brilliant rhetoricians win crowds, ambitious leaders steer policy, and the machinery of democracy be turned by people who were, in his view, educated in persuasion but not in virtue. The disaster of the Peloponnesian War and the execution of Socrates sit behind the line like a dark backlight: a society can be awash in skill and still commit profound injustice. Plato is warning that competence can become a weapon, and that a civilization that celebrates cleverness without ethical formation will end up governed by its most agile manipulators.

The intent is also pedagogical. Plato is arguing for a model of education that is less about information and more about moral training: the philosopher-king ideal, the insistence that the highest knowledge (the Good) is inseparable from right action. The quote works because it punctures a flattering modern myth: that being smart is synonymous with being right. Plato refuses that comfort. He wants an accounting of ends, not just means.