There is a simple childhood rhyme that dates back to the 1800s and goes like this:

There was an owl liv'd in an oak
The more he heard, the less he spoke
The less he spoke, the more he heard.
O, if men were all like that wise bird.

I do not know much, this I know to be true, as the days pass into years and I’m truly tested on my own imposed belief structures and accepted constructs. So I do not pretend to be the wellspring of all knowledge.

The politician, on the other hand, is expected to know everything, to have every answer at his disposal at all times. He’s expected to be a factory of information — not just information, but correct information — and when he fails in this, and invariably he will, he is vilified.

Certainty is the anesthesia of the tyrant. If people in authority were to admit they "do not know," they would lose the moral authority to use force. Imagine this in the political context: “I do not know whether this program will have the intended result but let’s do it anyway!”

This is why the state cannot admit ignorance, because ignorance doesn't have the power to subjugate.

The public — and the politician — would do well to accept the phase “I do not know” as the beginning of all knowledge. We look to the Tao Te Ching as a recipe for living, yet even Lao Tzu would gladly point out, over several chapters, that there is a lot he does not know, even about the Tao.

The more I listen, the more I hear, the more I know. But I do not pretend that knowing more makes me omnipresent. It just makes me more knowledgeable than I was, and more aware of my want of knowledge. In this understanding, my sovereignty is allowed to thrive.

The universe unfolds in mysterious ways, and neither scientist nor politician will ever know it all. Trying to formulate solutions based on incomplete assumptions without knowing that these assumptions are, indeed, incomplete, is a sickness that permeates throughout every law, regulation, and program that ever existed or will exist.

Knowing that you do not know is the best.
Not knowing that you do not know is an illness.

Truly, only those who see illness as illness
Can avoid illness.
The sage is not ill,
Because he sees illness as illness.
Therefore he is not ill.

— Chapter 71, Tao Te Ching, translation by Stefan Stenudd.

When the politician claims to have the “solution” for everything, he is engaging in a delusion that requires the rest of us to be the test subjects for his fantasy and his ambition.

I have found that “I do not know” is the only phrase that can break the spell. The Sage isn't a genius; he’s just a man who is “sick of being sick.” From this comes the profundity that he can stop pretending he knows what it takes to outsmart the universe and start listening to it instead.