Knowledge is knowing that

Knowledge is knowing that a tomato is a fruit, wisdom is knowing not to put it in a fruit salad.

Miles Kington

The meaning of the quote

In 2009, Ireland captain Brian O’Driscoll sat down at a press conference before a Six Nations match against England. A reporter asked him about playing alongside Martin Johnson, who was by then England’s coach. O’Driscoll took his time and answered with this quote, and the papers filled up with theories about what he meant.

Years later, he explained on a TV chat show that his centre partner Gordon D’Arcy had bet him he couldn’t slip the line into a press conference, with a full body wax for D’Arcy as the prize. O’Driscoll hadn’t even listened to the question because he had already picked his answer.

He borrowed the line from the British humorist Miles Kington. Knowledge is the fact you can look up, and wisdom is knowing what to do with it.

In 1893, the tomato question went all the way to the US Supreme Court. A New York importer named John Nix didn’t want to pay the 10% tax on imported vegetables, so he argued that his tomatoes were fruit, which came in tax-free. The judges agreed a botanist would call a tomato a fruit, but in Nix v. Hedden they ruled it a vegetable anyway, because people eat it with dinner and not for dessert.

Nix won the botany argument and lost the case.

Knowing that coffee keeps you awake is knowledge, and skipping the large one at 10 p.m. before an exam is wisdom. If a friend’s new haircut came out uneven, wisdom is waiting until after her party to mention it.

Knowledge comes from books, teachers and Google. Wisdom usually comes from experience, which often means putting the tomato in the fruit salad once and watching everyone pick it out. In the book From Strength to Strength, Arthur Brooks uses this quote to show why that kind of wisdom can keep growing for decades, even after we get slower at picking up new facts.

So keep collecting facts. Just check the salad before you add them.

About the author

Miles Kington (1941–2008) left Oxford hoping to write comedy with Terry Jones. The partnership never clicked, and Jones went on to help create Monty Python.

Kington found his feet at the humour magazine Punch, where he stayed for about 15 years. There he invented Franglais, a comic mix of English and schoolbook French that grew into a series of books, starting with Let’s Parler Franglais!

He moved on to The Times and then, in 1987, to The Independent, where the quote appeared in his column on 28 March 2003. Kington asked his readers who had first said it and then answered his own question.

“Well, it was me, actually. Thank you.”

He died of pancreatic cancer in January 2008, just after filing his final column. Even the title of his last book, How Shall I Tell the Dog?, joked about his diagnosis.

A bench by the canal near his home carries a plaque saying he hated the spot because there was never anywhere to sit down and enjoy it.

About a year after he died, his line turned up at a rugby press conference in Ireland, delivered for a bet.

Resources

• Brian O’Driscoll has explained the story behind his legendary tomato quote (Article)
• Knowledge is knowing a tomato is a fruit; wisdom is not putting it in a fruit salad (Article)
• Tomatoes have legally been vegetables since 1893 (Article)
• From Strength to Strength by Arthur C. Brooks (Book)
• Miles Kington (Wikipedia)
• Nix v. Hedden (Wikipedia)