Nobody Knows Anything
Because we don't know, do we? Everyone knows� How what happens the way it does? What underlies the anarchy of the train of events, the uncertainties, the mishaps, the disunity, the shocking irregularities that define human affairs? Nobody knows. 'Everyone knows' is the invocation of the clich� and the beginning of the banalization of experience, and it's the solemnity and the sense of authority that people have in voicing the clich� that's so insufferable. What we know is that, in an unclich�d way, nobody knows anything. You can't know anything. The things you know you don't know. Intention? Motive? Consequence? Meaning? All the we don't know is astonishing. Even more astonishing is what passes for knowing.
Philip Roth, in 'The Human Stain'