Ignorance Quotes
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Nothing in the world is more dangerous than sincere ignorance and conscientious stupidity.
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More Ignorance Quotes
Bigotry is the disease of ignorance, of morbid minds; enthusiasm of the free and buoyant. Education and free discussion are the antidotes of both.
thomas jefferson— Letter to John Adams (1 August 1816).
I remember, I remember, The fir trees dark and high; I used to think their slender tops Were close against the sky: It was a childish ignorance, But now 'tis little joy To know I'm farther off from heav'n Than when I was a boy.
Honorius of Autun— 1826 'I Remember'.
The Muslim world, with its history and cultures, and indeed its different interpretations of Islam, is still little known in the West… The two worlds, Muslim and non-Muslim, Eastern and Western, must, as a matter of urgency, make a real effort to get to know one another, for I fear that what we have is not a clash of civilisations, but a clash of ignorance on both sides.
aga khan iv— Closing Address by His Highness the Aga Khan at the "Musée-Musées" Round Table Louvre Museum, October 17, 2007 (AKDN)
Forts, arsenals, garrisons, armies, navies, are means of security and defence, which were invented in half-civilized times and in feudal or despotic countries; but schoolhouses are the republican line of fortifications, and if they are dismantled and dilapidated, ignorance and vice will pour in their legions through every breach.
horace mann— The Common School Journal, Vol. III, No. 17 (1 September 1841)
“Truth is a perilous commodity,” Julian admitted, “but so is ignorance, Adam more so.”
robert charles wilson— p. 200 (Julian Comstock: A Story of 22nd-Century America (2009))
The magic of first love is our ignorance that it can ever end.
benjamin disraeli— Henrietta Temple: A Love Story (1985, p. 180)
ignorance is an evil weed, which dictators may cultivate among their dupes, but which no democracy can afford among its citizens .
— Full Employment in a Free Society (1944) Pt. 7
For I say, this is death and the sole death, When a man's loss comes to him from his gain, Darkness from light, from knowledge ignorance, And lack of love from love made manifest.
Robert Browning— 1864 Dramatis Personae,'A Death in the Desert'.
If there be one here tonight who believes that his rights will not sooner or later be taken from him by the avaricious American pale faces, his ignorance ought to excite pity, for he knows little of our common foe... Then listen to the voice of duty, of honor, of nature and of your endangered country. Let us form one body, one heart, and defend to the last warrior our country, our homes, our liberty, and the graves of our fathers.
tecumseh— Speech before a joint council of the Choctaw and Chickasaw nations (1811)
The UFO research and investigation business is a cruel and shallow money trench, a long plastic hallway where thieves and pimps of corrupt ideology run free, agenda dictates, delusion is rampant and ignorance prevails. The infestation of wrongful motivation and the beggarly depths of belief reign supreme amidst a universal disregard for truth and factual actuality... where good men die like dogs. There's also a negative side . . .
kenny young— E-mail from Young to fellow Ufologists Sean Feeney and Paul Koch on December 26, 2001.
One of the deepest and strangest of all human moods is the mood which will suddenly strike us perhaps in a garden at night , or deep in sloping meadows, the feeling that every flower and leaf has just uttered something stupendously direct and important, and that we have by a prodigy of imbecility not heard or understood it. There is a certain poetic value , and that a genuine one, in this sense of having missed the full meaning of things. There is beauty , not only in wisdom , but in this dazed and dramatic ignorance .
gilbert keith chesterton— Robert Browning. (1903)
The mechanism of modern business is so delicate that extreme care must be taken not to interfere with it in a spirit of rashness or ignorance.
theodore roosevelt— First Annual Message to Congress (1901).
Our single greatest defense against scientific ignorance is education, and early in the life of every scientist, the child's first interest was sparked by a teacher.
peter agre— Peter Agre's speech at the Nobel Banquet, December 10, 2003
The gentlemen who wrote the Constitution were as suspicious of efficient government as they were wary of democracy, a "turbulence and a folly" that was associated with the unruly ignorance of an urban mob.
lewis h. lapham— Sacred Scroll, p. 73
There is an utter ignorance of, and indifference to, our sufferings and privations….What care they for us, provided we be submissive, pay the taxes, furnish recruits for the Army and Navy and bless the masters who either despise or oppress or combine both? The apathy that exists respecting Ireland is worse than the national antipathy they bear us.
Daniel O'Connell— Letter to T.M. Ray, 1839, on English attitudes to Ireland (O’Connell Correspondence, Vol VI, Letter No. 2588).
The subject matter covered in Carmina stays pretty basic: love, lust, the pleasures of drinking and the heightened moods evoked by springtime. These primitive and persistently relevant themes are nicely camouflaged by the Latin and old German texts, so the listener can actually feign ignorance while listening to virtually X-rated lyrics. (Veni Veni Venias! Come, come come now!)The music itself toggles between huge forces and a single voice, juxtaposing majesty and intimacy with ease...
carl orff— Marin Alsop in "Love, Lust and Drinking Stir Carmina" for Weekend Edition Saturday (11 November 2006)
I’m tired of ignorance held up as inspiration, where vicious anti-intellectualism is considered a positive trait, and where uninformed opinion is displayed as fact.
phil plait— "The mainstreaming of crazy" (8 September 2009)
The Enlightenment worldview held by Du Bois is ultimately inadequate, and, in many ways, antiquated, for our time. The tragic plight and absurd predicament of Africans here and abroad requires a more profound interpretation of the human condition — one that goes beyond the false dichotomies of expert knowledge vs. mass ignorance, individual autonomy vs. dogmatic authority, and self-mastery vs. intolerant tradition.
cornel west— The Future of the Race by Henry Louis Gates, Jr. and Cornel West (1997, pg. 64)
Reading is the way out of ignorance, and the road to achievement.
— Ben Carson, Think Big (p. 22)
As I have said before, the ever more sophisticated weapons piling up in the arsenals of the wealthiest and the mightiest can kill the illiterate, the ill, the poor and the hungry but they cannot kill ignorance, illnesses, poverty or hunger.
fidel castro— Speech at the International Conference on Financing for Development (March 2002)
Surely, God could have caused birds to fly with their bones made of solid gold, with their veins full of quicksilver, with their flesh heavier than lead, and with their wings exceedingly small. He did not, and that ought to show something. It is only in order to shield your ignorance that you put the Lord at every turn to the refuge of a miracle.
Galileo Galilei— Notes in a copy of Jean-Baptiste Morin's "Famous and ancient problems of the earth's motion or rest, yet to be solved" (published 1631), as quoted in The Crime of Galileo (1976) by Giorgio De Santillana, p. 167
Each such answer to the great question, invariably asserted by the followers of its propounder, if not by himself, to be complete and final, remains in high authority and esteem, it may be for one century, or it may be for twenty: but, as invariably, Time proves each reply to have been a mere approximation to the truth tolerable chiefly on account of the ignorance of those by whom it was accepted, and wholly intolerable when tested by the larger knowledge of their successors.
thomas henry huxley— Ch.2, p.72
In a cycle as old as tribalism, ignorance of the Other engenders fear; fear engenders hatred; hatred engenders violence; violence engenders further violence until the only "rights," the only law, are whatever is willed by the most powerful.
david mitchell— "An Orison of Sonmi~451", p. 303 (Nook Edition)
You see many stars in the sky at night, but not when the sun rises. Can you therefore say that there are no stars in the heavens during the day? O man, because you cannot find God in the days of your ignorance, say not that there is no God.
ramakrishna— Sayings of Sri Ramakrishna (1960, pg. 1)
I have heard of your paintings too, well enough; God hath given you one face, and you make yourselves another: you jig, you amble, and you lisp, and nickname God's creatures, and make your wantonness your ignorance. Go to, I'll no more on't; it hath made me mad.
william shakespeare— William Shakespeare, Hamlet
Enemies are at work day and night in the material realm. Chief among these are ignorance, carelessness, and greed. Operating independently or together, they have wrought enormous destruction.
— p.75 (Something More, A Consideration of the Vast, Undeveloped Resources of Life (1920))
The division created by the English educated scholars who separate the Vedas and the Upanishads from the Puranas and thus make a distinction between the Vedic dharma and the Puranic dharma is a mistake born of ignorance . The Puranas are accepted as an authority on the Hindu dharma because they explain the knowledge contained in the Veda and the Upanishads to the average man, comment upon it, discuss it at great length and endeavour to apply it to the commonplace details of life .
— Sri Aurobindo, in "Sri Aurobindo Writings in Bengali Translated into English".
ignorance never settles a question.
benjamin disraeli— Speech in the House of Commons (14 May 1866).
