Ignorance Quotes
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Bigotry is the disease of ignorance, of morbid minds; enthusiasm of the free and buoyant. Education and free discussion are the antidotes of both.
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More Ignorance Quotes
Nothing in the world is more dangerous than sincere ignorance and conscientious stupidity.
Martin Luther King Jr.— Strength to Love, pt. 4, ch. 3 (1963)
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)
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)
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 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'.
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)
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)
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.
At my back I hear the word ”homosexual” and it seems to split my world in two.... It is ignorance, our ignorance of one another, that creates this terrifying erotic chaos. Information, a crumb of information, seems to light the world.
john cheever— The Sixties, 1966 entry
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)
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
“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 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
Christopher, like many other writers, was shockingly ignorant of the objective world, except where it touched his own experience. When he had to hide his ignorance beneath a veneer, he simply consulted someone who could supply him with the information he needed.
christopher isherwood— Christopher and His Kind (1976), p. 192 (In this memoir, Isherwood refers to himself in the third person.)
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)
I have…read it with a good deal of amusement and enjoyment. The latter is due, I suppose, entirely to the subject – for everyone likes to imagine what a man could do if he were a dictator or Pope, or Caliph; the amusement is mainly at the author's expence. The style is one of the most preposterous I have ever read, and I doubt if I ever saw so much pedantry combined with so much ignorance.
frederick rolfe— C. S. Lewis, letter to Arthur Greeves dated October 1, 1934, cited from W. H. Lewis (ed.) The Collected Letters of C. S. Lewis (San Francisco: HarperSanFrancisco, 2004) vol. 2, p. 143
Reading is the way out of ignorance, and the road to achievement.
— Ben Carson, Think Big (p. 22)
Youth ages, immaturity is outgrown, ignorance can be educated, drunkenness sobered, but stupid lasts forever.
Aristophanes— Fictional attribution in the movie The Emperor's Club (2002), given by Kevin Kline (as William Hundert); also attributed to Diogenes, without sources; no published occurrences of this statement prior to the movie have been located in any of the Aristophanes Plays or Fragments.
Sedate ignorance is the last stage of deterioration.
henry s. haskins— p. 94 (Meditations in Wall Street (1940))
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
Experience, next, to thee I owe, Best guide; not following thee, I had remain'd In ignorance; thou open'st wisdom's way, And giv'st access, though secret she retire.
john milton— John Milton, Paradise Lost (1667; 1674), Book IX, line 807.
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).
