Quote #125350
It’s what you learn after you know it all that counts.
Harry S. Truman
About This Quote
This quote needs no introduction—at least for now. We're working on adding more context soon.
Interpretation
The remark underscores intellectual humility and lifelong learning: the most valuable growth often comes after one has achieved competence or status and is tempted to believe there is nothing left to master. By framing the decisive learning as what happens “after you know it all,” the line critiques complacency and overconfidence, suggesting that real wisdom begins when certainty is challenged by new evidence, experience, or responsibility. In a political leader’s mouth, it also reads as a warning against rigid ideology and a defense of adaptability—an insistence that effective judgment depends on continuing to learn, revise, and listen even at the highest levels of authority.


