Mark Twain in his Oxford robes,
1907

All schools, all colleges, have two great functions: to confer, and to conceal, valuable knowledge. The theological knowledge which they conceal cannot justly be regarded as less valuable than that which they reveal. That is, when a man is buying a basket of strawberries it can profit him to know that the bottom half of it is rotten.
- Notebook 1908

But we are all that way: when we know a thing we have only scorn for other people who don't happen to know it.
- Personal Recollections of Joan of Arc

For all the talk you hear about knowledge being such a wonderful thing, instinct is worth forty of it for real unerringness.
- Tom Sawyer Abroad

Sir, I have been through it from Alpha to Omaha, and I tell you that the less a man knows the bigger the noise he makes and the higher the salary he commands.
- "How I Edited an Agricultural Paper," 1870

You may have noticed that the less I know about a subject the more confidence I have, and the more new light I throw on it.
- A Bibliography of Mark Twain, Merle Johnson,1935

I was gratified to be able to answer promptly and I did. I said I didn't know.
- Life on the Mississippi