not even nohow

But here is an enjoyable part of the dialogue: Theodorus’s rant against the residents of Ephesus, followers of their deceased compatriot Heraclitus…

THEODORUS: For there is no discussing these principles of Heraclitus with the Ephesians themselves, who profess to be familiar with them; you might as well talk to a maniac. Faithful to their own treatises they are literally in perpetual motion; their capacity for staying still to attend to an argument or a question or for a quiet interchange of question and answer amounts to less than nothing, or rather even a minus quantity is too strong an expression for the absence of the least modicum of repose in these gentry.

A bit later, Socrates joins in the mockery of the Heracliteans…

SOCRATES: Except, Theodorus, that I used the words “so” and “not so,” whereas we have no right to use this word “so”… nor yet “not so”: there is no change in that either. Some new dialect will have to be instituted for the exponents of this theory, since, as it is, they have no phrases to fit their proposition– unless indeed it were “not even nohow.” That might be an expression indefinite enough to suit them.

THEODORUS: A most appropriate idiom.