Ignorance Quotes

Most Americans are close to total ignorance about the world. They are ignorant. That is an unhealthy condition in a country in which foreign policy has to be endorsed by the people if it is to be pursued. And it makes it much more difficult for any president to pursue an intelligent policy that does justice to the complexity of the world.

Painting is easy when you don't know how, but very difficult when you do.

The only thing that is more expensive than education is ignorance.

We live on an island surrounded by a sea of ignorance. As our island of knowledge grows, so does the shore of our ignorance.

As a poet I hold the most archaic values on earth . . . the fertility of the soil, the magic of animals, the power-vision in solitude, the terrifying initiation and rebirth, the love and ecstasy of the dance, the common work of the tribe. I try to hold both history and the wilderness in mind, that my poems may approach the true measure of things and stand against the unbalance and ignorance of our times.

Humility and knowledge in poor clothes excel pride and ignorance in costly attire.

He was distinguished for ignorance; for he had only one idea, and that was wrong.

How do you know so much about everything?' was asked of a very wise and intelligent man; and the answer was 'By never being afraid or ashamed to ask questions as to anything of which I was ignorant.'

Against stupidity the very gods fight in vain.

Ignorance is the softest pillow on which a man can rest his head.

Injustice, poverty, slavery, ignorance - these may be cured by reform or revolution. But men do not live only by fighting evils. They live by positive goals, individual and collective, a vast variety of them, seldom predictable, at times incompatible.

Unintelligent people always look for a scapegoat.

Children's talent to endure stems from their ignorance of alternatives.

Reason obeys itself; and ignorance submits to whatever is dictated to it.

There are many things of which a wise man might wish to be ignorant

When a wise man does not understand, he says: "I do not understand." The fool and the uncultured are ashamed of their ignorance. They remain silent when a question could bring them wisdom.

Ignorance is not bliss - it is oblivion.

Trust that little voice in your head that says 'Wouldn't it be interesting if...'; And then do it.

Ignorance is the night of the mind, but a night without moon or star.

The principles of justice are chosen behind a veil of ignorance.

The first magic of love is our ignorance that it can ever end.

Be ever questioning. Ignorance is not bliss. It is oblivion. You don't go to heaven if you die dumb. Become better informed. Lean from others' mistakes. You could not live long enough to make them all yourself.

Where ignorance is bliss, 'Tis folly to be wise.

Nothing is so good for an ignorant man as silence; and if he was sensible of this he would not be ignorant.

His ignorance is encyclopedic.

God's plan' is often a front for men's plans and a cover for inadequacy, ignorance, and evil.

Our knowledge can only be finite, while our ignorance must necessarily be infinite.

Evil is relatively rare. Ignorance is epidemic.

A long habit of not thinking a thing wrong gives it a superficial appearance of being right.

We smile at the ignorance of the savage who cuts down the tree in order to reach its fruit; but the same blunder is made by every person who is over eager and impatient in the pursuit of pleasure.

The shortest route to courage is absolute ignorance.

It takes a lot of things to prove you are smart, but only one thing to prove you are ignorant.

No history is mute. No matter how much they own it, break it, and lie about it, human history refuses to shut its mouth. Despite deafness and ignorance, the time that was continues to tick inside the time that is.

A man only becomes wise when he begins to calculate the approximate depth of his ignorance.

I want nothing to do with any religion concerned with keeping the masses satisfied to live in hunger, filth, and ignorance. I want nothing to do with any order, religious or otherwise, which does not teach people that they are capable of becoming happier and more civilized on this earth, capable of becoming master of his fate and captain of his soul.

He who joyfully marches to music in rank and file has already earned my contempt. He has been given a large brain by mistake, since for him the spinal cord would suffice.

Ignorance is always afraid of change.

Ignorance is not bad faith. But persistence in ignorance is.

Everyone has a responsibility to not only tolerate another person's point of view, but also to accept it eagerly as a challenge to your own understanding. And express those challenges in terms of serving other people.

Most of the basic truths of life sound absurd at first hearing.

It is not good to try to stop knowledge from going forward. Ignorance is never better than knowledge.

Owing to ignorance of the rope the rope appears to be a snake; owing to ignorance of the Self the transient state arises of the individualized, limited, phenomenal aspect of the Self.

An expert is someone who has succeeded in making decisions and judgements simpler through knowing what to pay attention to and what to ignore.

The mark of your ignorance is the depth of your belief in injustice and tragedy. What the caterpillar calls the end of the world, the Master calls the butterfly.

This is the concentration camp and crematorium at Auschwitz. This is where people were turned into numbers. Into this pond were flushed the ashes of some four million people. And that was not done by gas. It was done by arrogance. It was done by dogma. It was done by ignorance. When people believe that they have absolute knowledge, with no test in reality, this is how they behave.

A person is never happy except at the price of some ignorance.

Where did I get the nerve to think I could handle American teenagers? Ignorance. That's where I got the nerve.

...human beings are a species splendid in their array of moral equipment, tragic in their propensity to misuse it, and pathetic in their ignorance of the misuse.

It's innocence when it charms us, ignorance when it doesn't."

The average man has a carefully cultivated ignorance about household matters - from what to do with the crumbs to the grocer's telephone number - a sort of cheerful inefficiency which protects him.

In practice, socialism didn't work. But socialism could never have worked because it is based on false premises about human psychology and society, and gross ignorance of human economy.

A man remains ignorant because he loves ignorance, and chooses ignorant thoughts; a man becomes wise because he loves wisdom and chooses wise thoughts.

Curiosity is the one thing invincible in Nature.

Backward is just not a natural direction for Americans to look - historical ignorance remains a national characteristic.

Consistency requires you to be as ignorant today as you were a year ago.

All forms of tampering with human beings, getting at them, shaping them against their will to your own pattern, all thought control and conditioning is, therefore, a denial of that in men which makes them men and their values ultimate.

Unprovided with original learning, unformed in the habits of thinking, unskilled in the arts of composition, I resolved to write a book.

I believe order is better than chaos, creation better than destruction. I prefer gentleness to violence, forgiveness to vendetta. On the whole I think that knowledge is preferable to ignorance, and I am sure that human sympathy is more valuable than ideology. I believe that in spite of the recent triumphs of science, men haven't changed much in the last two thousand years; and in consequence we must try to learn from history.

Discussion is an exchange of knowledge; an argument an exchange of ignorance.

Ignorance of how we are shaped racially is the first sign of privilege. In other words. It is a privilege to ignore the consequences of race in America.

It is not ignorance but knowledge which is the mother of wonder.

Keep your eyes wide open before marriage, half shut afterwards.

Ignorance of the law excuses no man from practicing it.

The empty vessel giveth a greater sound than the full barrel.

I also believe my home state is cursed by ignorance and poverty and racism, much of it deliberately inculcated to control a vulnerable electorate. And I believe many of the politicians in Louisiana are among the most stomach-churning examples of white trash and venality I have ever known. To me, the fact that large numbers of people find them humorously picaresque is mind numbing, on a level with telling fond tales of one's rapist.

The wrongs done to trees, wrongs of every sort, are done in the darkness of ignorance and unbelief, for when the light comes, the heart of the people is always right.

What first truly stirred my soul was not fear or pain, nor was it pleasure or games; it was the yearning for freedom. I had to gain freedom-but from what, from whom? Little by little, in the course of time, I mounted freedom's rough unaccommodating ascent. To gain freedom first of all from the Turk, that was the initial step; after that, later, this new struggle began: to gain freedom from the inner Turk-from ignorance, malice and envy, from fear and laziness, from dazzling false ideas; and finally from idols, all of them, even the most revered and beloved.

Every mind was made for growth, for knowledge, and its nature is sinned against when it is doomed to ignorance.

It is always advisable to perceive clearly our ignorance.

Ordinary people believe only in the possible. Extraordinary people visualize not what is possible or probable, but rather what is impossible. And by visualizing the impossible, they begin to see it as possible.

Racism does not diminish with brains, it's a disease, a sickness, it may incubate in ignorance but it doesn't necessarily disappear with the gaining of wisdom!

My mother said I must always be intolerant of ignorance but understanding of illiteracy. That some people, unable to go to school, were more educated and more intelligent than college professors.

My top most priority is to deal with India's massive social and economic problems, so that chronic poverty, ignorance and disease can be conquered in a reasonably short period of time.

Ah! destructive Ignorance, what shall be done to chase thee out of the World!

The doorstep to the temple of wisdom is a knowledge of our own ignorance.

Nothing is more fearful than imagination without taste.

To be ignorant of one's ignorance is the malady of the ignorant.

One learns by doing the thing; for though you think you know it, you have no certainty until you try

Selective ignorance, a cornerstone of child rearing. You don't put kids under surveillance: it might frighten you. Parents should sit tall in the saddle and look upon their troops with a noble and benevolent and extremely nearsighted gaze.

Once you start asking questions, innocence is gone.

The greatest conflicts are not between two people but between one person and himself.

Truth will always be truth, regardless of lack of understanding, disbelief or ignorance.

Acquaint yourself with your own ignorance.

The opposite of love is not hate, the opposite of love is ignorance.

Ignorance is the first requisite of the historian - ignorance, which simplifies and clarifies, which selects and omits, with a placid perfection unattainable by the highest art.

...Writings can be stolen, or changed, or used for evil purposes. But isn't the risk worth taking? The more people who share knowledge, the greater safeguard for it. Isn't there more danger in ignorance than knowledge?

The reason there's so much ignorance is that those who have it are so eager to share it.

A weak mind is like a microscope, which magnifies trifling things, but cannot receive great ones.

I am astonished each time I come to the U.S. by the ignorance of a high percentage of the population, which knows almost nothing about Latin America or about the world. It's quite blind and deaf to anything that may happen outside the frontiers of the U.S.

Evil (ignorance) is like a shadow— it has no real substance of its own, it is simply a lack of light. You cannot cause a shadow to disappear by trying to fight it, stamp on it, by railing against it, or any other form of emotional or physical resistance. In order to cause a shadow to disappear, you must shine light on it

Nothing in education is so astonishing as the amount of ignorance it accumulates in the form of inert facts.

It is the eye of ignorance that assigns a fixed and unchangeable color to every object; beware of this stumbling block.

Ignorance never settles a question.

Admiration is the daughter of ignorance.

Fear is bred from ignorance. So knowledge is a weapon against it, and reason is the tool of knowledge.

Prejudice is the child of ignorance.

There are few earthly things more beautiful than a university a place where those who hate ignorance may strive to know, where those who perceive truth may strive to make others see.

Of all the wastes of human ignorance perhaps the most extravagant and costly to human growth has been the waste of the distinctive powers of womanhood after the child-bearing age.

There is nothing harder than the softness of indifference.

The tree of knowledge is not the tree of life! And yet can we cast out of our spirits all the good or evil poured into them by so many learned generations? Ignorance cannot be learned.

God tolerates even our stammering, and pardons our ignorance whenever something inadvertently escapes us - as, indeed, without this mercy there would be no freedom to pray.

In no other field of scientific endeavor do otherwise intelligent people feel free to make public claims based on prejudice and ignorance. Yet in relation to psychic phenomena, committed materialists feel free to disregard the evidence and behave irrationally and unscientifically, while claiming to speak in the name of science and reason. They abuse the authority of science and bring rationalism into disrepute.

Ignorance breeds monsters to fill up the vacancies of the soul that are unoccupied by the verities of knowledge.

Then in October, Indian Summer, the air turned so soft, the sunlight so fragile, and each day's loveliness so poignantly doomed that even self-ignorance and restlessness felt like profound states of being, and he just wandered the empty beaches and misty headlands in a state of serene confusion and awe.

Three minutes thought would suffice to find this out; but thought is irksome and three minutes is a long time.

The essence of knowledge is, having it, to apply it; not having it, to confess your ignorance.

It is impossible to make people understand their ignorance, for it requires knowledge to perceive it; and, therefore, he that can perceive it hath it not.

Boredom comes simply from ignorance and lack of imagination.

You can do one of two things; just shut up, which is something I don't find easy, or learn an awful lot very fast, which is what I tried to do.

Not engaging in ignorance is wisdom.

The recipe for perpetual ignorance is: Be satisfied with your opinions and content with your knowledge.

Gross ignorance is 144 times worse than ordinary ignorance.

Our knowledge is a receding mirage in an expanding desert of ignorance.

Opinion is the medium between knowledge and ignorance.

To remove ignorance is an important branch of benevolence.

I know nothing but the certainty of my own ignorance.

Believe none of what you hear and half of what you see.

I would prefer as friend a good man ignorant than one more clever who is evil too.

The ignorance of the world leaves one at the mercy of its malice.

Ignorance of God's prophetic outline, failure to know God's program for the Church, the nations, and Israel, is the cause of the overwhelming amount of error and misunderstanding of the events of the future.

If any religion allows the persecution of the people of different faiths, if any religion keeps women in slavery, if any religion keeps people in ignorance, then I can't accept that religion.

The greatest obstacle to discovering the shape of the earth, the continents, and the oceans was not ignorance but the illusion of knowledge.

To let God make us, instead of painfully trying to make ourselves; to follow the path that his love shows us, instead of through conceit or cowardice or mockery choosing another; to trust Him for our strength and fitness as the flowers do, simply giving ourselves back to Him in grateful service,ﾂ葉his is to keep the laws that give us the freedom of the city in which there is no longer any night of bewilderment or ignorance or uncertainty.

Whoever will be cured of ignorance, let him confess it.

What struck me whenever I visited a farm was how much more sophisticated was the life the animals were capable of living than was assumed by those exploiting them. The more we are willing to see about their lives, the more we will see. Humans seem to take perverse pleasure in attributing stupidity to animals when it is almost always entirely a question of human ignorance.

Ignorance of the law excuses no man; not that all men know the law, but because 'tis an excuse every man will plead, and no man can tell how to refute him.

All that belongs to human understanding, in this deep ignorance and obscurity, is to be sceptical, or at least cautious, and not to admit of any hypothesis whatever, much less of any which is supported by no appearance of probability.

The freedom now desired by many is not freedom to do and dare but freedom from care and worry.

Your ignorance cramps my conversation

I wish you would read a little poetry sometimes. Your ignorance cramps my conversation.

Willful ignorance and endless laws become the replacement for self-education and self-restraint, because ignorance and laws are easy.

The trouble with most folks isn't their ignorance. It's knowin' so many things that ain't so.

Any fool can see the limits of seeing, but not even the wisest know the limits of knowing. Thus is ignorance rendered invisible, and are all Men made fools.

To most people, nothing is more troublesome than the effort of thinking.

It is a blind goose that cometh to the fox's sermon.

Our ignorance of history causes us to slander our own times.

Is sloppiness in speech caused by ignorance or apathy? I don't know and I don't care.

The Wright brothers flew through the smoke screen of impossibility.

Ignorance has always been the weapon of tyrants; enlightenment the salvation of the free.

Ignorance is no excuse, it's the real thing.

Imaginary obstacles are insurmountable. Real ones aren't. But you can't tell the difference when you have no real information. Fear can create even more imaginary obstacles than ignorance can. That's why the smallest step away from speculation and into reality can be an amazing relief...The Reality Solution means: Do it before you're ready.

Lawyers are the only persons in whom ignorance of the law is not punished.

Today's audience knows more about what's on television than what's in life.

It is, however, a most astonishing but incontestable fact, that the history of the evolution of man as yet constitutes no part of general education. Indeed, our so-called "educated classes" are to this day in total ignorance of the most important circumstances and the most remarkable phenomena which Anthropogeny has brought to light.

A little learning is a dangerous thing, but a lot of ignorance is just as bad.

There is no limit to stupidity. - Space itself is said to be bounded by its own curvature, but stupidity continues beyond infinity.

Stupidity has a certain charm - ignorance does not.

Today, if you are not confused, you are not thinking clearly.

There are two things which cannot be attacked in front: ignorance and narrow-mindedness. They can only be shaken by the simple development of the contrary qualities. They will not bear discussion.

Lack of understanding is a great power. Sometimes it enables men to conquer the world.

Out of compassion I destroy the darkness of their ignorance. From within them I light the lamp of wisdom and dispel all darkness from their lives.

There is no stopping the world's tendency to throw off imposed restraints, the religious authority that is based on the ignorance of the many, the political authority that is based on the knowledge of the few.

The truest characters of ignorance are vanity and pride and arrogance.

If we don't know life, how can we know death?

If you can impress any man with an absorbing conviction of the supreme importance of some moral or religious doctrine; if you can make him believe that those who reject that doctrine are doomed to eternal perdition; if you then give that man power, and by means of his ignorance blind him to the ulterior consequences of his own act,-he will infallibly persecute those who deny his doctrine.

One good thing about being young is that you are not experienced enough to know you cannot possibly do the things you are doing.

The prejudices of ignorance are more easily removed than the prejudices of interest; the first are all blindly adopted, the second willfully preferred.

Cruelty to dumb animals is one of the distinguishing vices of low and base minds. Wherever it is found, it is a certain mark of ignorance and meanness; a mark which all the external advantages of wealth, splendour, and nobility, cannot obliterate. It is consistent neither with learning nor true civility.

Whenever two good people argue over principles, they are both right.

Information can bring you choices and choices bring power - educate yourself about your options and choices. Never remain in the dark of ignorance.

I count religion but a childish toy, and hold there is no sin but ignorance.

Where ignorance is our master, there is no possibility of real peace.

All I know about humor is that I don't know anything about it.

Teachers must be celebrated for moving civilization from ignorance to enlightenment, from apathy to responsibility.

Her own mother lived the latter years of her life in the horrible suspicion that electricity was dripping invisibly all over the house.

Woe unto thee if after all thy profession thou shouldst be found under the power of ignorance, lost in formality, drowned in earthly-mindedness, envenomed with malice, exalted in an opinion of thine own righteousness, leavened with hypocrisy and carnal ends in God's service.

Dignity is a mask we wear to hide our ignorance.

Science is the father of knowledge, but opinion breeds ignorance.

It is impossible to defeat an ignorant man in argument.

Never let your persistence and passion turn into stubbornness and ignorance.

There are three classes of men; the retrograde, the stationary and the progressive.

I learn by going where I have to go.

To succeed in life, you need two things: ignorance and confidence.

Ignorance is never out of style. It was in fashion yesterday, it is the rage today and it will set the pace tomorrow.

Meditation brings wisdom; lack of mediation leaves ignorance. Know well what leads you forward and what hold you back, and choose the path that leads to wisdom.

The only foes that threaten America are the enemies at home, and these are ignorance, superstition and incompetence.

We keep, in science, getting a more and more sophisticated view of our essential ignorance.

Naivete in grownups is often charming; but when coupled with vanity it is indistinguishable from stupidity.

Ignorance is not so damnable as humbug, but when it prescribes pills it may happen to do more harm.

The beginning of an acquaintance whether with persons or things is to get a definite outline of our ignorance.

A whipper-snapper of criticism who quoted dead languages to hide his ignorance of life.

Where there is an unknowable, there is a promise.

One of the greatest joys known to man is to take a flight into ignorance in search of knowledge

Poverty has many roots, but the tap root is ignorance.

The trouble ain't that people are ignorant: it's that they know so much that ain't so

The truth is incontrovertible. Malice may attack it, ignorance may deride it, but in the end, there it is.

Ignorance seldom vaults into knowledge, but passes into it through an intermediate state of obscurity, even as night into day through twilight.

We cannot but be astonished at the ease with which men resign themselves to ignorance about what is most important for them to know; and we may be certain that they are determined to remain invincibly ignorant if they once come to consider it as axiomatic that there are no absolute principles.

The poor don't know that their function in life is to exercise our generosity.

No one know what he can do till he tries.

Innocence dwells with Wisdom, but never with ignorance...

Art hath an enemy call'd ignorance .

Wonder is the foundation of all philosophy, inquiry the progress, ignorance the end.

The little I know I owe to my ignorance.

Intelligence is really a kind of taste: taste in ideas.

I don't believe that the public knows what it wants; this is the conclusion that I have drawn from my career.

It is not the insurrections of ignorance that are dangerous, but the revolts of the intelligence.

Creators of history always play with our impotence and our ignorance.

A jury is composed of twelve men of average ignorance.

Ignorance and inconsideration are the two great causes of the ruin of mankind.

A play is made by sensing how the forces in life simulate ignorance-you set free the concealed irony, the deadly joke.

Nothing sways the stupid more than arguments they can't understand

George Washington, as a boy, was ignorant of the commonest accomplishments of youth. He could not even lie.

Why waste time learning, when ignorance is instantaneous?

The greatest wisdom often consist in ignorance.

True friendship can afford true knowledge. It does not depend on darkness and ignorance.

Ignorance is stubborn and prejudice is hard.

Ignorance is a blank sheet, on which we may write; but error is a scribbled one, on which we must first erase.

I do not pretend to know where many ignorant men are sure - that is all that agnosticism means.

People are subject to moods, to temptations and fears, lethargy and aberration and ignorance, and the staunchest qualities shift under the stresses and strains of daily life.

The tax which will be paid for the purpose of education is not more than the thousandth part of what will be paid to kings, priests and nobles who will rise up among us if we leave the people in ignorance