Das also ist keine Freundschaft, dass, wenn der eine die Wahrheit nicht hören will, der andere zum Lügen bereit ist. - Cicero

Freedom is participation in power.

A: For what stronger proof can there be of its [philosophy's] uselessness than that some accomplished philosophers lead disgraceful lives?
M: It is no proof at all; for as all cultivated fields are not harvest-yielding [...] so all cultivated minds do not bear fruit. To continue the figure – as a field, though fertile, cannot yield a harvest without cultivation, no more can the mind without learning; thus each is feeble without the other. But philosophy is the cultivation of the soul. It draws out vices by the root, prepares the mind to receive seed, and commits to it, and, so to speak, sows in it what, when grown, may bear the most abundant fruit.

What reason had he then for endeavouring, with such bitter hostility, to force me into the senate yesterday? Was I the only person who was absent? Have you not repeatedly had thinner houses than yesterday? Or was a matter of such importance under discussion, that it was desirable for even sick men to be brought down? Hannibal, I suppose, was at the gates, or there was to be a debate about peace with Pyrrhus; on which occasion it is related that even the great Appius, old and blind as he was, was brought down to the senate-house.