poliphilo: (Default)
poliphilo ([personal profile] poliphilo) wrote2021-07-01 11:38 am

Donald Rumsfeld RIP

Donald Rumsfeld came across as twinkly and avuncular- but that was the private man- who doesn't really concern us. No doubt his family will miss him.

The public man was one of the makers of the Iraq war- about which future historians are unlikely to have anything nice to say.

He will probably be remembered best for his dictum about unknown unknowns- which has always struck me as an elegant and witty summation of the human condition.

The full quotation is...

“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.”