Sure knowledge is the enemy of learning.

Once you claim to know something, you have shut yourself off to ever learning anything new about the subject. If I claim “sure knowledge”, I am also claiming “sure stubbornness”. I am claiming “sure ignorance”, and consequently “sure damnation”.

“Sure knowledge” means that I have shut myself off to the possibility of nuance and more information. Why would I be interested in learning more if I already “know” a thing? I would never consider new ideas, because I would “know” that I have already learned the whole of a thing.

It is eternally dangerous to make such an audacious claim as the one of sure knowledge, yet we hear it all the time. The pride in this idea is cancerous, because it begins to infect our other notions.

I do not know anything. I believe many things, but I try to be open to the idea that my beliefs are wrong, that I do not have all the information, and that the number of things I can learn is eternal and infinite. With such a perspective, how could I ever claim to know the end of a thing?