"It ain't what you don't know that gets you. It's what you think you know that just ain't so."
Not Mark Twain. Josh Billings is credited with something similar, if less pithy. If Donald Rumsfeld had understood it (he famously didn't: "known unknowns"), the US might have stayed out of Iraq.
It certainly doesn't sound like Twain. That first sentence is awful.
As far as Rumsfeld, known unknowns means knowing what you don't know the answer to, his problem was more with "there are known knowns; there are things we know we know.", because obviously he needed another category there as well, the incorrect known knowns.
I don't think Twain has anything like the same 'mind share' outside of America (speaking from the UK) - or else I'm just making excuses for being much worse read than I'd like - so for a long time I honestly thought 'Mark Twain' was a fictional character to whom a quotation could be jokingly attributed, sort of like 'Acme Ltd', etc.
Of course it is sometimes done for comic effect, and that probably didn't help, but I was quite surprised when I, relatively recently, realised that he was actually a real author, and probably some of the attributions I've come across were real and correct!
We'd have to do a study to know for sure, but as a North American having lived in Western Europe for several years now, I think you are massively overestimating the importance of the US in Europe or the world. Most people here know next to nothing about the US or the anglosphere, except for some stereotypes and exported cultural artefacts.
They know about as much about the US as the average American does about Germany or how to speak German, which is basically nothing.
One has to remember, English is a business tool here, the majority cannot speak English fluently, and they do not use it in their free time, or if they do it is to watch US TV shows or movies, not read American literature. Add to that, that more recently, a lot of the people I meet openly hate the US.
Most Americans who visit only interact with the segment of population which can speak English, not with the majority of locals who can't.
I disagree. It's quite possible that this disagreement is particular to The Netherlands, but we're /steeped/ in US culture. We also 'hate' the US. It's complicated.
If you listen to a conversation any thirty- and probably twenty-something (and possibly teen?) has, it's steeped in references to US media. Friends, Arrested Development, Breaking Bad, etc.
We had Obama election parties back when we thought he was an actual change candidate. Among the more reading- or academically-inclined, we reference Twain, Poe, Wallace (D.F.), and so on.
Personally I'm not very Dutch, and so my alignment with US culture in the broadest sense is greater than most, but I'm constantly surprised by how much of my culture here is defined by the US. It properly eclipses anything home-made, anyways, at least when it comes to entertainment, which is what we spend most idle time on anyways.
I think you are massively overestimating the importance of the US in Europe
I'm a European who lives in the US so I somewhat doubt that but it's possible. Mark Twain is a world-famous author and I'd go as far as to say that in many places in Europe he's a more canonical part of children's literature than he is in the US.
Here's an article that touches on some of that specifically for Germany:
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[ 1.9 ms ] story [ 37.7 ms ] threadNot Mark Twain. Josh Billings is credited with something similar, if less pithy. If Donald Rumsfeld had understood it (he famously didn't: "known unknowns"), the US might have stayed out of Iraq.
As far as Rumsfeld, known unknowns means knowing what you don't know the answer to, his problem was more with "there are known knowns; there are things we know we know.", because obviously he needed another category there as well, the incorrect known knowns.
Of course it is sometimes done for comic effect, and that probably didn't help, but I was quite surprised when I, relatively recently, realised that he was actually a real author, and probably some of the attributions I've come across were real and correct!
They know about as much about the US as the average American does about Germany or how to speak German, which is basically nothing.
One has to remember, English is a business tool here, the majority cannot speak English fluently, and they do not use it in their free time, or if they do it is to watch US TV shows or movies, not read American literature. Add to that, that more recently, a lot of the people I meet openly hate the US.
Most Americans who visit only interact with the segment of population which can speak English, not with the majority of locals who can't.
If you listen to a conversation any thirty- and probably twenty-something (and possibly teen?) has, it's steeped in references to US media. Friends, Arrested Development, Breaking Bad, etc.
We had Obama election parties back when we thought he was an actual change candidate. Among the more reading- or academically-inclined, we reference Twain, Poe, Wallace (D.F.), and so on.
Personally I'm not very Dutch, and so my alignment with US culture in the broadest sense is greater than most, but I'm constantly surprised by how much of my culture here is defined by the US. It properly eclipses anything home-made, anyways, at least when it comes to entertainment, which is what we spend most idle time on anyways.
I'm a European who lives in the US so I somewhat doubt that but it's possible. Mark Twain is a world-famous author and I'd go as far as to say that in many places in Europe he's a more canonical part of children's literature than he is in the US.
Here's an article that touches on some of that specifically for Germany:
https://www.pri.org/stories/2013-01-10/germans-love-mark-twa...
- Abraham Lincoln