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Theaetetus quotes
11 quotes from Theaetetus by Plato. Source: Project Gutenberg e-text #1726 (public domain in the USA), the text this site’s reader shows. Each quote is copied exactly from that text and links to its passage in the reader; when this page was built, every quote was checked word for word against the reader’s text.
SOCRATES: I see, my dear Theaetetus, that Theodorus had a true insight into your nature when he said that you were a philosopher, for wonder is the feeling of a philosopher, and philosophy begins in wonder.
SOCRATES: Evils, Theodorus, can never pass away; for there must always remain something which is antagonistic to good.
Man, he says, is the measure of all things, of the existence of things that are, and of the non-existence of things that are not:--You have read him?
'My answer is, that knowledge is perception.'
Wherefore we ought to fly away from earth to heaven as quickly as we can; and to fly away is to become like God, as far as this is possible; and to become like him, is to become holy, just, and wise.
THEAETETUS: I cannot say, Socrates, that all opinion is knowledge, because there may be a false opinion; but I will venture to assert, that knowledge is true opinion: let this then be my reply; and if this is hereafter disproved, I must try to find another.
"Knowledge is perception," have all the same meaning.
"To myself I am the judge of what is and what is not."
SOCRATES: Herein lies the difficulty which I can never solve to my satisfaction--What is knowledge? Can we answer that question?
SOCRATES: Yet perception is knowledge: so at least Theaetetus and I were saying.
And so, Theaetetus, knowledge is neither perception nor true opinion, nor yet definition accompanying true opinion.