Success Quote by Arnold H. Glasow

Ignorance has a loud mouth, and Glasow is betting on that. Coming from a businessman rather than a philosopher, the line reads less like a library maxim and more like a boardroom survival tip: the energy people spend performing competence often exceeds the effort required to actually become competent.

The intent is quietly corrective. It targets the everyday theater of “I’ve got this” culture: bluffing through meetings, padding emails with jargon, nodding along in technical conversations you don’t understand. Glasow’s phrasing is a neat reversal of what vanity expects. We assume knowledge is the heavy lift and ignorance is effortless. He flips it: ignorance becomes a liability you must actively manage, because it leaks through hesitation, overconfidence, deflection, and the telltale use of buzzwords as camouflage.

The subtext is also moral, but not sanctimonious. He’s not scolding people for not knowing; he’s exposing the social incentives that make not knowing feel shameful. In workplaces especially, admitting uncertainty can feel like surrendering status. So people invest in concealment: strategic vagueness, “circling back,” blaming complexity, changing the subject. Those tactics are exhausting and fragile. One follow-up question and the mask slips.

Contextually, it fits a mid-century business ethos that prized practicality and self-improvement over abstract intellect. Glasow’s punchline sells a pragmatic humility: curiosity is cheaper than pretense, and competence is less costly than constant image management. The line works because it treats learning not as virtue-signaling, but as the most efficient form of honesty.