Am I the only one not getting it?

A friend recently posted a status message supposedly by Abraham Lincoln (or Mark Twain according to some sites) which goes something like this

Better to remain silent and be thought a fool than to speak out and remove all doubt.

At first glance I thought, yeah its been very well put. I left it at that. However being pretty much an emptyhead these days, today out of nowhere it struck me that there is something really wrong with this quote. It just doesn't feel right.

I feel the quote is a big paradox in itself in some context. We are to remain silent and be thought of as a fool. However even if we speak something people will still think we are a fool. So basically we are a bunch of fools and nothing else. Maybe this is the case if we don't look at its hidden meaning which I assume is

Only speak about something if you know about it.

Suppose this is the intended meaning but still it doesn't make any sense to me. If I am ignorant about a particular subject then am I just suppose to agree with someone else's opinion without doubting it even for a moment. Its no use forming an opinion because I cant discuss it and clear my doubts, And so even if someone's completely wrong, I should just take it blindly just because I am oblivious. But then this the not the way world works. Without a perspective we would've still lived in a world where Earth was the center of the universe because Aristotle believed so. We would still be living on DC current because Edison thought thats the only efficient transmission. Schools as of 1900s or maybe earlier would've cease to exist. People would've been dumb as ducks(no offense to them).

Lets take the other case too. Even though we are Experts at something, we remain quiet. Whats the point of knowing something and not letting it out. If the world would've agreed to this, earth would've been round for some and flat for others. But nobody would've dared to correct others cause they didn't want to come across as fools. And still people would've been dumb as ducks(the ducks are going to kill me, they must be thinking look at the audacity of this guy, cannot crack a quote and calls us dumb).

So what exactly is the quote trying to convey still remains beyond me. If Mark Twain is the father of this quote, then maybe it was meant to be satirical but people didn't understand the hidden irony underneath it. But why Abe Lincoln would say anything like this is quite mysterious. I don't think he was known to be a humorist.

I have been scratching my head over this for almost a day now and all I can conclude is its a big irony. What you folks think? Am I the only one not getting it or I am the only one who cracked it (or atleast that's what I think). According to the father of quote I should have remained quiet and be thought as a fool, but hell I would rather put myself in a fool's shoes and learn something.