But I'm not telling you to only befriend the perfectly wise. Where would you find such a person? We've been looking for centuries without success. Instead of the perfect person, pick the least flawed one you can find. You'd be hard-pressed to find a better time for choosing good friends than if you could pick from Plato, Xenophon, and the other students of Socrates. Or imagine if you lived in Cato's era — that age produced many people worthy of living alongside Cato. (It also produced some of the worst villains in history, masterminds of terrible crimes. Both types were needed to show what Cato truly was. He needed good people to admire him and bad people to test his strength.) But today, when good people are so rare, you can't be so picky.
Yet I do not advise you to follow after or draw to yourself no one except a wise man: for where will you find him whom for so many centuries we have sought in vain? in the place of the best possible man take him who is least bad. You would hardly find any time that would have enabled you to make a happier choice than if you could have sought for a good man from among the Platos and Xenophons and the rest of the produce of the brood of Socrates, or if you had been permitted to choose one from the age of Cato: an age which bore many men worthy to be born in Cato's time (just as it also bore many men worse than were ever known before, planners of the blackest crimes: for it needed both classes in order to make Cato understood: it wanted both good men, that he might win their approbation, and bad men, against whom he could prove his strength): but at the present day, when there is such a dearth of good men, you must be less squeamish in your choice.