Cicero: “While people admire in general everything that is great or better than they expect, they admire in particular the good…”

For we may well be guided by those fundamental principles of justice which I laid down at the outset: first, that no harm be done to anyone; second, that the common interests be conserved.

But for the most part, people are led to wrong-doing in order to secure some personal end; in this vice, avarice is generally the controlling motive.

For they secure one sort of justice, to be sure, in that they do no positive wrong to anyone, but they fall into the opposite injustice; for hampered by their pursuit of learning they leave to their fate those whom they ought to defend.

Accordingly, in encountering danger we should do as doctors do in their practice: in light cases of illness they give mild treatment; in cases of dangerous sickness they are compelled to apply hazardous and even desperate remedies.