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SOC. That is the right way, Theaetetus. It is better to speak up boldly than to hesitate about answering, as you did at first. For if we act in this way, one of two things will happen: either we shall find what we are after, or we shall be less inclined to think we know what we do not know at all; and surely even that would be a recompense not to be despised. Well, then, what do you say now? Assuming that there are two kinds of opinion, one true and the other false, do you define knowledge as the true opinion?
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THEAET. Yes. That now seems to me to be correct.
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SOC. Is it, then, still worth while, in regard to opinion, to take up again—?
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THEAET. What point do you refer to?
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SOC. Somehow I am troubled now and have often been troubled before, so that I have been much perplexed in my own reflections and in talking with others, because I cannot tell what this experience is which we human beings have, and how it comes about.
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THEAET. What experience?
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SOC. That anyone has false opinions. And so I am considering and am still in doubt whether we had better let it go or examine it by another method than the one we followed a while ago.
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THEAET. Why not, Socrates, if there seems to be the least need of it? For just now, in talking about leisure, you and Theodorus said very truly that there is no hurry in discussions of this sort.
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SOC. You are right in reminding me. For perhaps this is a good time to retrace our steps. For it is better to finish a little task well than a great deal imperfectly.
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THEAET. Of course.
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SOC. How, then, shall we set about it? What is it that we do say? Do we say that in every case of opinion there is a false opinion, and one of us has a false, and another a true opinion, because, as we believe, it is in the nature of things that this should be so?
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THEAET. Yes, we do.