I have tried to know absolutely nothing about a great many things, and I have succeeded fairly well.

Benchley’s line is a self-mocking inversion of the usual ideal of broad knowledge. By claiming he has “tried” to know nothing—and has “succeeded”—he turns ignorance into a kind of comic accomplishment. The joke depends on treating not-knowing as an intentional discipline, suggesting that modern life’s flood of information makes selective disengagement feel like a skill. It also satirizes the way people boast about expertise: Benchley boasts, but about the opposite. The humor carries a mild critique of pretension and of the expectation that an educated person must have opinions on everything.