“THE more you know, the more you know you don’t know,” said Aristotle.

At least, I’d thought he said it. I’ve certainly seen the words scrawled across pictures of sunsets in inspirational memes on Facebook, always ascribed to him. But naturally I did some research into the quote, to ensure I wasn’t beginning this column with an egregious lie. I value you too much for that.

And it appears this line isn’t actually found in translations of Aristotle’s work. Indeed, in all my ten-minute Google, I couldn’t find an agreed authorial provenance. It’s also attributed to Socrates and Einstein - and it was cited in a 2014 tweet by one Donald J Trump - but I’m not sure who said it first. Maybe Trump? He said all the best words first.

But I am sorry to be inconclusive. I thought I knew who said it, but then the more I learned, the more I realized I didn’t know, so at least my research kind of proved the idea.

To me, the observation implicitly links knowledge and understanding with modesty and self-doubt. This theory, if true, wouldn’t reflect very well on highly opinionated folk - those who are convinced they are right, and who scorn equivocation and nuance. That kind of person is everywhere these days. Has humanity ever been subjected, on a daily basis, to as much opinion as it is today? In my opinion, it definitely hasn’t.

There are informed opinions, uninformed opinions, gut reactions, received wisdoms, paid-for opinions, entrenched beliefs, tuppence-worths, ill-thought-through opinions, well-argued opinions and dim-witted musings – and that’s just in this column.

From the frothing Twitter hordes to those proffering their wisdom in internet comment sections, we live in a glorious world where everyone has a voice, even anonymous people who may or may not be AI bots programmed in a shed in rural Russia.

But in this deafening hall of opinion, the ones shouting loudest seem so often to be the ones who don’t know what they don’t know – and probably don’t care that they don’t know it.

Puce-coloured motorists declaring climate change a hoax. Diehard Remainers declaring everyone a racist. People who think the Earth is flat declaring that the Earth is flat. When did everyone get so sure of themselves?

A key part of the problem is, of course, the Internet, and as every day goes by, I grow more convinced it was a mistake and we should cast it back into the fires from whence it came. But until the glorious Unplugging happens, and we return to the days before “a ten-minute Google” was an acceptable replacement for the search for truth, there’s a problem - trust.

Which opinions can be trusted? Expert opinion? In some fields more than others, perhaps. Since 2008, for example, economic experts have had an understandably low stock, for failing to see the global crash coming down the line.

And what about those who have opinions professionally? Across the national media, an interchangeable centrist commentariat has lost its grasp on what normal people think and feel. To me, the inability of the national media to understand the country it purports to speak for is key to its falling levels of trust. Trust me when I say that in a YouGov poll in November, the majority of respondents - 77 per cent - said they had little to no trust in journalists.

This isn’t about celebrating ignorance. But in turbulent political times, where opinions and predictions are constantly held up as equal with established fact, is it too late for a smidgeon of humility?

The singer Father John Misty puts it elegantly. “Eventually the dying man takes his final breath - but first checks his newsfeed to see what he’s about to miss,” he sings in the keyboard-warrior-skewering Ballad of a Dying Man. “It occurs to him a little late in the game, we leave as clueless as we came.”

In 2019, would it be too much to hope that the nation’s opinionated multitudes, expert and non-expert, of whatever industry, attempt to quash their biases, reign in their partisan leanings and strive to acknowledge that their humble opinions really are, in fact, quite humble?

“The more you know, the more you know you don’t know,” as someone once said, probably.