"One of Socrates’ friends went to the oracle of Delphi and asked them who was the wisest of men. It was, of course, Socrates. While many would accept such praise, Socrates believed that the gods were wrong and set out to disprove them by finding someone wiser. He questioned the poets, the politicians, the craftspeople—anyone who would speak with him. He found that everyone believed they knew far more than they did—and the more ignorant a person, the more they believed they knew. Reflecting on this, Socrates concluded that the gods were right: he was the wisest because he knew that he knew nothing, that his infinite ignorance eclipsed what little he knew. While some were grateful to Socrates, most were outraged at Socrates and saw to it that he was put on trial and sentenced to death."
"While American political philosophy holds that everyone is equal and everyone has a right to free expression, these are wrongly interpreted as everyone being equal in knowledge and that all opinions are equally good (although mine is first among equals). The science fiction writer Isaac Asimov noted this: “There is a cult of ignorance in the United States, and there has always been. The strain of anti-intellectualism has been a constant thread winding its way through our political and cultural life, nurtured by the false notion that democracy means that my ignorance is just as good as your knowledge.”
Einstein gave the same test to students every year. When asked why he would do something like that, "Because the answers had changed."