Who said the following?

The vast accumulations of knowledge — or at least of information — deposited by the twentieth century have been responsible for an equally vast ignorance. When there is so much to be known, when there are so many fields of knowledge in which the same words are used with different meanings, when everyone knows a little about a great many things, it becomes increasingly difficult for anyone to know whether he knows what he is talking about or not.

Don’t you hate it when people throw a quote out there in a show-offy kind of way and ask who said it? Especially when there’s a trick involved — as there is here. The writer wasn’t talking about the “vast accumulations of knowledge” deposited by the twentieth century — or the twenty-first, or by Wikipedia — but rather that unmanageable pile of information deposited by the nineteenth century. The writer was T.S. Eliot, in his essay, “The Perfect Critic.” (Available in this book.)

One is reminded, perhaps, of something someone sang in 1965:

Now I wish I could write you a melody so plain
That could hold you dear lady from going insane
That could ease you and cool you and cease the pain
Of your useless and pointless knowledge

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