An educated person is one who has learned that information almost

There is a sharp and enduring wisdom in the words of Russell Baker, who once wrote: “An educated person is one who has learned that information almost always turns out to be at best incomplete and very often false, misleading, fictitious, mendacious — just dead wrong.” In this statement, he unravels the illusion of certainty, reminding us that true education does not lie in memorizing facts, but in recognizing the limits of knowledge. The more one learns, the more one sees how fragile truth can be — how much of what is called “fact” today becomes folly tomorrow. An educated mind, then, is not one that knows everything, but one that knows how little it truly knows.

Baker, a journalist and essayist who chronicled the shifting truths of the modern age, understood that information is both powerful and perilous. He lived in a century when newspapers, governments, and even scholars claimed authority over truth — only to be proven wrong time and again. Wars were justified by lies, leaders rose on illusions, and entire generations were taught falsehoods disguised as facts. His words were not cynical; they were a call to humility. For he saw that the essence of wisdom lies not in accumulation, but in discernment — in the courage to question even what seems certain.

This idea echoes through the ages. The philosopher Socrates declared that the wisest man is he who knows that he knows nothing. Centuries later, Baker spoke with the same spirit, but in the language of the information age — an era flooded with data, yet starved of truth. The ancients faced ignorance in the form of superstition; we face it in the form of misinformation. The danger has changed its mask, but not its nature. The truly educated person, Baker reminds us, is not the one who accepts knowledge blindly, but the one who tests it, challenges it, and remains vigilant against deception.

History offers us countless examples of the tragedy born from false certainty. Consider the doctors of the past who swore that bleeding a patient would cure disease; the scientists who believed the Earth the center of the universe; the governments that convinced nations to hate, conquer, and destroy in the name of progress. Each believed itself to be guided by truth, and yet each was dead wrong. Only those who dared to doubt — to question the “facts” of their time — advanced human understanding. It was Galileo who challenged the heavens, Darwin who challenged creation, Rosa Parks who challenged law. Each was, in Baker’s sense, truly educated — for each knew that accepted truth is often a veil over deeper ignorance.

But Baker’s insight goes beyond history; it touches the soul. For every individual must face the same awakening: the realization that the knowledge we cling to — about others, about ourselves, about the world — is often flawed. We form opinions on half-truths, judge by appearances, and trust words more than wisdom. To become truly educated is to shed this arrogance and to cultivate intellectual humility — to listen, to learn, to doubt, and to seek. It is to live not by the comfort of certainty, but by the strength of curiosity.

And yet, this humility is not despair. Baker does not say that truth is unreachable — only that it must be pursued endlessly. The educated person is not the one who stops seeking when they find an answer, but the one who understands that every answer is the beginning of another question. Education, then, is not a destination but a pilgrimage — a lifelong walk through the shifting sands of truth. The wise accept that even their understanding may one day be proven false, and they greet that revelation not with fear, but with gratitude.

Let this, then, be the lesson passed down to those who seek wisdom: do not worship information, for it is an idol with feet of clay. Seek instead understanding, which is forged through reflection and tempered by doubt. Read deeply, but question even what is written; listen widely, but trust only what rings true in the heart tested by reason. Remember that to be educated is not to be full, but to be open — not to know all things, but to keep learning, even when learning wounds the pride of certainty.

Thus, as Russell Baker taught, the mark of the truly educated is not in the number of facts they possess, but in the grace with which they admit, “I may be wrong.” For only that humility, born of wisdom, opens the door to real truth — the truth that lives beyond the reach of mere information, in the ever-unfolding mystery of understanding itself.