There Are Known Knowns - in Popular Culture

In Popular Culture

Since Rumsfeld's speech, the full quote and the terms "known knowns" and "unknown unknowns" have appeared in popular culture:

  • The title of The Unknown Knowns: A Novel by Jeffrey Rotter is an allusion to the quote, and the full quote appears in the book's inscription
  • The quote is featured in the CD recording, The Poetry of Donald Rumsfeld and Other Fresh American Art Songs
  • Hart Seely's compilation of quotes by Rumsfeld is entitled Pieces of Intelligence: The Existential Poetry of Donald H. Rumsfeld (2003)
  • In The Boondocks animated series, the character Gin Rummy, a representation of Donald Rumsfeld, makes several references to unknown unknowns
  • The band No Use for a Name used the entire aforementioned quote in their song Fields of Agony (Acoustic) on the record Rock Against Bush, Vol. 2
  • In "Lil' George and Lil' Tony Blair", an episode of Lil' Bush, Lil' Rummy makes a reference to the unknown unknowns
  • The Joan Jett song "Riddles" features the full unknown unknowns quote
  • Belgian director Johan Grimonprez ends his film essay Double Take with the quote
  • Theoretical physicist Lawrence Krauss uses the quote as opening to the second chapter of his book A Universe from Nothing

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Famous quotes containing the words popular and/or culture:

    “There is a continual exchange of ideas between all minds of a generation. Journalists, popular novelists, illustrators, and cartoonists adapt the truths discovered by the powerful intellects for the multitude. It is like a spiritual flood, like a gush that pours into multiple cascades until it forms the great moving sheet of water that stands for the mentality of a period.”
    —Auguste Rodin (1849–1917)

    “Without metaphor the handling of general concepts such as culture and civilization becomes impossible, and that of disease and disorder is the obvious one for the case in point. Is not crisis itself a concept we owe to Hippocrates? In the social and cultural domain no metaphor is more apt than the pathological one.”
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