The wisdom here cuts against our culture of comparison—we're so quick to dismiss incremental change as worthless unless it matches someone else's pace. Plato reminds us that discouragement often kills progress before slowness ever does; a person advancing steadily, however modestly, possesses something far more valuable than raw talent without momentum. Think of someone learning to write, or recovering from illness, or building a small business: the steady practitioner will eventually surpass the discouraged prodigy every single time, simply because they kept showing up. The real insight is that discouragement operates like a thief that steals the future from the present—it doesn't just slow you down, it stops you cold.