A little learning is a dangerous thing

There is a famous line of poetry by Alexander Pope that is almost always quoted out of context: “A little learning is a dangerous thing.”

“A little learning is a dangerous thing,” wrote the poet Alexander Pope.

“Or this? ‘A little learning is a dangerous thing.

At the same time, the lamentable fact must be admitted that "a little learning is a dangerous thing" to some persons.

This confidence of ignorance is nowhere more perfectly, or more briefly, expressed, than in four oft-repeated lines, in Pope’s Essay on Criticism: “A little learning is a dangerous thing; Drink deep, or taste not the Pierian spring: These shallow draughts intoxicate the brain, And drinking largely sobers us again.”