Science Quote by Isaac Asimov

Asimov’s line is a tidy little grenade: it detonates the smugness of know-it-alls by flipping the usual hierarchy. The first clause sketches a familiar villain - the person “who think[s]” they know everything - but the punchline lands by revealing a second figure hiding in plain sight: “those of us who do.” It’s a boast disguised as a complaint, a joke that implicates the speaker even as it skewers the target. That’s the trick. The quote doesn’t just mock arrogance; it stages an arrogance-off and dares you to notice.

The intent is double-edged. On the surface, it’s an office-friendly jab at Dunning-Kruger types before the internet gave them a name. Underneath, it’s a performance of competence, a way for the truly knowledgeable to vent about how confidence can be louder than evidence. The comedy works because it mimics the cadence of moral superiority (“we reasonable people”) and then exposes how easily that posture slides into its own kind of insufferable certainty.

Context matters: Asimov was a scientist and a mass communicator, someone who spent his life translating complex ideas for general audiences. That job breeds a particular irritation: not ignorance, but the refusal to be taught. The line also reflects a mid-20th-century faith in expertise - paired with an awareness that expertise, when weaponized as identity, becomes just another ego costume. The quote endures because it flatters the reader and scolds them in the same breath.