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For Anne Berger, in loving memory Socrates: That is just what surprises me, Gorgias, and has made me ask you all this time what in the world the power of rhetoric can be. For, viewed in this light, its greatness comes over me as something supernatural. Gorgias: Ah yes, if you knew all, Socrates,—how it comprises in itself practically all powers at once! And I will tell you a striking proof of this: many and many a time have I gone with my brother or other doctors to visit one of their patients, and found him unwilling either to take medicine or submit to the surgeon’s knife or cautery; and when the doctor failed to persuade him I succeeded, by no other art than that of rhetoric. . . . So great, so strange, is the power of this art. Plato, Gorgias, circa 386 b.c.e. ...

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