[428d]
Socrates
My excellent Cratylus, I myself have been marvelling at my own wisdom all along, and I cannot believe in it. So I think we ought to reexamine my utterances. For the worst of all deceptions is self-deception. How can it help being terrible, when the deceiver is always present and never stirs from the spot? So I think we must turn back repeatedly to what we have said and must try, as the poet says, to look “both forwards and backwards.
”Hom. Il. 1.343; 3.109
My excellent Cratylus, I myself have been marvelling at my own wisdom all along, and I cannot believe in it. So I think we ought to reexamine my utterances. For the worst of all deceptions is self-deception. How can it help being terrible, when the deceiver is always present and never stirs from the spot? So I think we must turn back repeatedly to what we have said and must try, as the poet says, to look “both forwards and backwards.
”Hom. Il. 1.343; 3.109
