Wit & Attitude Quote by James P. Hogan

Certainty is the tell, and Hogan knows it. The line slices a familiar social dynamic into a bitterly efficient asymmetry: the people least equipped to steer the world do so with the most confidence, while the people most equipped to question, calibrate, and course-correct hesitate because they can see the moving parts. It works because it’s not really about intelligence as IQ; it’s about epistemology as posture. “Fools and fanatics” aren’t merely wrong - they’re immune to feedback. Their certainty is a social technology: it reads as strength, simplifies complex problems into slogans, and recruits followers who want relief from ambiguity.

Hogan, a science fiction writer associated with hard-SF’s respect for rationalism, is also writing in the shadow of the 20th century’s ideological wreckage: totalizing creeds, cultish movements, and the bureaucratic confidence that built catastrophes with immaculate paperwork. The subtext is a warning about how modern publics mistake emotional firmness for truth. Doubt, in his framing, isn’t weakness; it’s a sign of contact with reality’s complexity. The “wiser people” don’t just lack backbone - they’re burdened by the awareness of trade-offs, unintended consequences, and how often data arrives late and incomplete.

There’s a darker implication too: a world that rewards certainty selects for the wrong leaders. Hogan’s punchline isn’t that doubt should paralyze us, but that the moral and intellectual work of responsible action begins with admitting what we don’t know - even when the confident crowd is already marching.