MARCUS: Nor am I asham’d, as some others are, to confess I do not know, what I do not.
[Nec me pudet ut istos fateri nescire quod nesciam.]
Marcus Tullius Cicero (106–43 BC) Roman orator, statesman, philosopher
Tusculan Disputations [Tusculanae Disputationes], Book 1, ch. 25 (1.25) / sec. 60 (1.60) (45 BC) [tr. Wase (1643)]
(Source)
Discussing his uncertainty of what the immortal soul is made of, versus others that pretend at knowing the answer.
(Source (Latin)). Other translations:Nor am I, like those, ashamed to own where I am ignorant, that I am so.
[tr. Main (1824)]Nor am I ashamed, as those are, to confess my ignorance of what I do not know.
[tr. Otis (1839)]Nor am I, as those men are, ashamed in cases where I am ignorant, to own that I am so.
[tr. Yonge (1853)]And I am not ashamed, like those who deny that there is a soul, to confess my ignorance of what I do not know.
[tr. Peabody (1886)]Nor am I ashamed -- as some whom you wot of -- to confess that I do not know what I do not know.
[tr. Black (1889)]I am not, like some men, ashamed to confess my ignorance when I do not know.
[ed. Harbottle (1897)]Nor am I ashamed, as they are, to admit that I do not know what I do not know.
[tr. Douglas (1985)]And I'm not embarrassed (unlike others) to admit that I don't know.
[tr. Habinek (1996)]And unlike those others, I am not ashamed to admit to my ignorance where I am ignorant.
[tr. Davie (2017)]
Quotations about:
knowability
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When I reached intellectual maturity and began to ask myself whether I was an atheist, a theist, or a pantheist; a materialist or an idealist; Christian or a freethinker; I found that the more I learned and reflected, the less ready was the answer; until, at last, I came to the conclusion that I had neither art nor part with any of these denominations, except the last. The one thing in which most of these good people were agreed was the one thing in which I differed from them. They were quite sure they had attained a certain “gnosis,” — had, more or less successfully, solved the problem of existence; while I was quite sure I had not, and had a pretty strong conviction that the problem was insoluble.
