
“If you ask me to play myself, I will not know what to do. I do not know who or what I am.”
As quoted in Halliwell's Filmgoer's Companion (1988) by Leslie Halliwell, p. 622
Romans 7:14-20 http://www.jw.org/en/publications/bible/nwt/books/romans/7/
Epistle to the Romans
“If you ask me to play myself, I will not know what to do. I do not know who or what I am.”
As quoted in Halliwell's Filmgoer's Companion (1988) by Leslie Halliwell, p. 622
“Basic research is what I am doing when I don't know what I am doing.”
In an interview in the New York Times (16 December 1957), cited in a footnote on page 32 of "Work, Society, and Culture" by Yves Reni Marie Simon, and also in a footnote (in German) on page 360 of "Vita activa oder Vom taetigen Leben" by Hannah Arend (1981)
Variants:
Basic research is when I'm doing what I don't know I'm doing.
Research is what I'm doing when I don't know what I'm doing.
Basic research is what I am doing when I don't know what I am doing.
Curtain - Poirot's Last Case (1975)
Context: I have no more now to say. I do not know, Hastings, if what I have done is justified or not justified. No — I do not know. I do not believe that a man should take the law into his own hands... But on the other hand, I am the law! As a young man in the Belgian police force I shot down a desperate criminal who sat on a roof and fired at people below. In a state of emergency martial law is proclaimed.
Source: The Plague of Fantasies (1997), Chapter One: The Seven Veils of Fantasy, p.9
"Doing What I Know" (song)
Song lyrics
Source: Gilbert O'Sullivan, "Doing What I Know" https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=YlkC9AFrSNU (song on YouTube)
Speech http://www.let.rug.nl/usa/documents/1951-/speech-by-george-c-wallace-the-civil-rights-movement-fraud-sham-and-hoax-1964-.php (4 July 1964)
1960s
“What then is time? If no one asks me, I know what it is. If I wish to explain it to him who asks, I do not know.”
Quid est ergo tempus? Si nemo ex me quaerat, scio; si quaerenti explicare velim, nescio.
XI, 14
Confessions (c. 397)