I might think about it a little bit, and if I can't figure it out then I go on to something else. But I don't have to know an answer. I don't feel frightened by not knowing things, by being lost in the mysterious universe without having any purpose — which is the way it really is, as far as I can tell. Possibly. It doesn't frighten me.
Source: No Ordinary Genius (1994), p. 239, from interview in "The Pleasure of Finding Things Out" (1981): video http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=NEwUwWh5Xs4&t=48m10s
“I have tried to know absolutely nothing about a great many things, and I have succeeded fairly well.”
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Robert Benchley 29
American comedian 1889–1945Related quotes
Source: Adventures of a Mathematician - Third Edition (1991), Chapter 15, Random Reflections on Mathematics and Science, p. 273-274
A "tweet" by John Cleese on his @JohnCleese [verified] Twitter account, 4 Apr 2017
“I could have been a great many things.”
Variant: I should have been a great many things, Mr Mayor
Source: Little Women
Trumpism is here to stay: America’s neo-fascist fever dream has only just begun (2016)
“Now I'm a scientific expert; that means I know nothing about absolutely everything.”
Source: 2001: A Space Odyssey
On avoiding titling an unfinished work in “Interview with Terrance Hayes” http://katonahpoetry.com/interviews/interview-terrance-hayes/ in the Katonah Poetry Series (2017 Sep 21)
"Me and You".
Volume Two (2010)
The Tragic Sense of Life (1913), VI : In the Depths of the Abyss
Context: Yes, I know well that others before me have felt what I feel and express; that many others feel it today, although they keep silence about it.... And I do not keep silence about it because it is for many the thing which must not be spoken, the abomination of abominations — infandum — and I believe that it is necessary now and again to speak the thing which must not be spoken.... Even if it should lead only to irritating the devotees of progress, those who believe that truth is consolation, it would lead to not a little. To irritating them and making them say: "Poor fellow! if he would only use his intelligence to better purpose!... Someone perhaps will add that I do not know what I say, to which I shall reply that perhaps he may be right — and being right is such a little thing! — but that I feel what I say and I know what I feel and that suffices me. And that it is better to be lacking in reason than to have too much of it.