Imagine me in a crowded marketplace, with a dagger up my seleve, saying to you, "Polus, I've just go myself some marvelous tyrannical power. So, if I see fit to have any one of these people you see here put to death right on the spot, to death he'll be put. And if I see fit to have one of them have his head bashed in, bashed in it will be, right away. If I see fit to have his coat ripped apart, ripped it will be. That's how great my power in this city is!" Suppose you didn't believe me and I showed you the dagger. On seeing it, you'd be likely to say, "But Socrates, everybody could have great power that way. For this way any house you see fit might be burned down, and so might the dockyards and triremes of the Athenians, and all their ships, both public and private." But then that's not what having great power is, doing what one sees fit.
[Plato, Gorgias, Zeyl, tr. Hackett, p. 32]
The passage led to some interesting discussion on the nature of true power, and what is merely a pitiable and pathetic grasping after it, as well as the difference between a conception of power or success based on doing something because one can and sees fit to do it -- which underlies much of the rhetoric by which people try to persuade us to buy or to vote -- and a conception of power or success based on doing what is good for oneself and others. It's one of the reasons I teach the Gorgias; there's no better Platonic dialogue for discussing in a direct way things we deal with every day even in our society.
