"A learned blockhead is a greater blockhead than an ignorant one"
About this Quote
The sting here is that Franklin isn’t mocking ignorance so much as indicting credentialed stupidity. A plain blockhead can plead lack of exposure; the “learned” blockhead has been given tools - books, tutors, status - and still insists on being wrong, only now with better grammar and more confidence. Franklin, the printer-turned-polymath, knew how easily education can become costume: a way to signal virtue and authority while dodging the harder work of judgment.
The line works because it flips a comforting hierarchy. We like to imagine learning as an automatic upgrade, as if knowledge accrues moral interest. Franklin’s jab says the opposite: learning can compound error, making it more stubborn and more socially contagious. A fool with a library is not merely a fool; he’s a fool with leverage. In an 18th-century world thick with pamphlets, salons, and gentlemen “of letters,” that leverage mattered. The American founding era prized enlightenment rationality, but it also bred a class of people who could quote Locke while practicing self-serving dogma. Franklin’s target is that type: the person who uses education to win arguments rather than to refine thought.
Subtextually, it’s a democratic warning from a statesman who distrusted aristocratic pretension and loved practical intelligence. He’s defending curiosity, humility, and adaptability - the experimental mindset - against the embalmed mind that mistakes polish for insight. The insult isn’t anti-intellectual; it’s anti-vanity. Franklin is telling you that ignorance can be corrected, but ego armed with education becomes an institution.
The line works because it flips a comforting hierarchy. We like to imagine learning as an automatic upgrade, as if knowledge accrues moral interest. Franklin’s jab says the opposite: learning can compound error, making it more stubborn and more socially contagious. A fool with a library is not merely a fool; he’s a fool with leverage. In an 18th-century world thick with pamphlets, salons, and gentlemen “of letters,” that leverage mattered. The American founding era prized enlightenment rationality, but it also bred a class of people who could quote Locke while practicing self-serving dogma. Franklin’s target is that type: the person who uses education to win arguments rather than to refine thought.
Subtextually, it’s a democratic warning from a statesman who distrusted aristocratic pretension and loved practical intelligence. He’s defending curiosity, humility, and adaptability - the experimental mindset - against the embalmed mind that mistakes polish for insight. The insult isn’t anti-intellectual; it’s anti-vanity. Franklin is telling you that ignorance can be corrected, but ego armed with education becomes an institution.
Quote Details
| Topic | Wisdom |
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