Quote: By three methods we may learn wisdom (attrib Confucius 1893)

[Jonathan Lighter]

I first heard about "unknown unknowns" around 1979.  Things we don't even
know we don't know because we have no idea they even exist.
Consider mad-cow prions.

JL


On Mon, Nov 8, 2010 at 11:41 AM, Paul Frank <paulfrank at post.harvard.edu>wrote:

> ---------------------- Information from the mail header
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> Sender:       American Dialect Society <ADS-L at LISTSERV.UGA.EDU>
> Poster:       Paul Frank <paulfrank at POST.HARVARD.EDU>
> Subject:      Re: Quote: By three methods we may learn wisdom (attrib
> Confucius
>              1893)
>
> -------------------------------------------------------------------------------
>
> Rumsfeld, mass murderer though he may have been, never got the credit
> he deserved for this fine piece of extemporaneous poetry.
>
> Paul
>
> On Mon, Nov 8, 2010 at 5:11 PM, Dan Goncharoff <thegonch at gmail.com> wrote:
> > Are you sure it wasn't Donald Rumsfeld?
> >
> > *The Unknown
> > *As we know,
> > There are known knowns.
> > There are things we know we know.
> > We also know
> > There are known unknowns.
> > That is to say
> > We know there are some things
> > We do not know.
> > But there are also unknown unknowns,
> > The ones we don't know
> > We don't know.
> >
> > DanG
>
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--
"If the truth is half as bad as I think it is, you can't handle the truth."

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