Tag: donald rumsfeld

Con­fu­cius: To know that we know what we know, and that we do not know what we do not know, that is true knowl­edge. Don­ald Rums­feld, for­mer Sec­re­tary of Defense, aka "Rums­fu­cious:" 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 brief­in­gTh­ore­au cites Con­fu­cius dur­ing a dis­cus­sion of self-knowl­edge in Walden, and it remind­ed me of Ol Rum­my. Looks like he was on to some­thing deep­er after all. I thought he was talk­ing about intel­li­gence, but he was real­ly get­ting at "true knowl­edge." Per­haps the US gov­ern­ment should cre­ate a Cen­tral True Knowl­edge Agency? Speak­ing of true knowl­edge, the entire­ty of Walden is online.