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[199a]

Theaetetus
But that too is absurd.

Socrates
Shall we then say that words are nothing to us, if it amuses anyone to drag the expressions “know” and “learn” one way and another, but since we set up the distinction that it is one thing to possess knowledge and another thing to have it, we affirm that it is impossible not to possess what one possesses, so that it never happens that a man does not know that which he knows, but that it is possible to conceive a false opinion about it?


Plato. Plato in Twelve Volumes, Vol. 12 translated by Harold N. Fowler. Cambridge, MA, Harvard University Press; London, William Heinemann Ltd. 1921.

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