Friday, March 28, 2008

unknown unknown – noun

Something that one doesn't know that one doesn't know (e.g. anything one thinks one knows).

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.


—Feb. 12, 2002, Department of Defense news briefing
(h/t to Slate)

2 comments:

Kimmijo said...

"Oh, you think you know. Yeah, you might know you think you know what you know. But you never can tell what you know is what you know until you know it and need to know more because you didn't realize you didn't know what you thought you knew until you knew you didn't know..." -Nathan Fox, in the April 2008 issue of Print

Plotinus said...

Exactly.