ALCIBIADES: Never.

SOCRATES: Well, but if Orestes in like manner had not known his mother, do
you think that he would ever have laid hands upon her?

ALCIBIADES: No.

SOCRATES: He did not intend to slay the first woman he came across, nor
any one else's mother, but only his own?

ALCIBIADES: True.

SOCRATES: Ignorance, then, is better for those who are in such a frame of
mind, and have such ideas?

ALCIBIADES: Obviously.

SOCRATES: You acknowledge that for some persons in certain cases the
ignorance of some things is a good and not an evil, as you formerly
supposed?

ALCIBIADES: I do.

SOCRATES: And there is still another case which will also perhaps appear
strange to you, if you will consider it? (The reading is here uncertain.)

ALCIBIADES: What is that, Socrates?

SOCRATES: It may be, in short, that the possession of all the sciences, if
unaccompanied by the knowledge of the best, will more often than not injure