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what you don't know can't hurt you

what you don't know can't hurt you phrase: if one does not know about a problem or a misdeed, one will not be able to render oneself unhappy by worrying about it.

Phrase

what you don't know can't hurt you

  1. If one does not know about a problem or a misdeed, one will not be able to render oneself unhappy by worrying about it.
    • So they put me on the payroll, and I guess Father Paul Shanley in Boston and I were the first to get paid for picking up hustlers! The salary order went all the way to Cardinal Cooke's office, and he approved it personally. But they never realized I wasn't trying to convert people to being...1981 December 12, Robert J. Nelson, quoting Leo Gallant, “Creating a People”, in Gay Community News, volume 9, number 21, page 7

Questions about what you don't know can't hurt you

What does what you don't know can't hurt you mean?
What you don't know can't hurt you means if one does not know about a problem or a misdeed, one will not be able to render oneself unhappy by worrying about it.
What part of speech is what you don't know can't hurt you?
What you don't know can't hurt you is a phrase.

Words near what you don't know can't hurt you in the dictionary

  1. what way the wind is blowing
  2. what wins on Sunday sells on Monday
  3. what with
  4. what would Jesus do
  5. what would you like
  6. what you don't know can't hurt you
  7. what you gain on the swings you lose on the roundabouts
  8. what you lose on the swings you gain on the roundabouts
  9. what you on with
  10. what you saying
  11. what you see is what you get

Source and license

Adapted from Wiktionary: what you don't know can't hurt you (page history and authors). Text available under the Creative Commons Attribution-ShareAlike 4.0 license. Word.ws reformatted the entry and added links. Wiktionary data of 2026-09-02.

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