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).
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'.
“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))
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
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'.
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.
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).
The magic of first love is our ignorance that it can ever end.
benjamin disraeli— Henrietta Temple: A Love Story (1985, p. 180)
To charge all unmerited praise with the guilt of flattery, and to suppose that the encomiast always knows and feels the falsehood of his assertions, issurely to discover great ignorance of human nature and human life. In determinations depending not on rules, but on experience and comparison, judgement is always to some degree subject to affection.Very near to admiration is the wish to admire.
— 1779-81 Lives of the English Poets,'Halifax'.
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)
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
All you've got to do is own up to your ignorance honestly, and you'll find people who are eager to fill your head with information.
walt disney— As quoted by Mike Strickland, Director of Photographers at Walt Disney, Co. in Power Marketing for Wedding and Portrait Photographers (2004) by Mitche Graf, p. 19
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.
garrison keillor— Leaving Home? (1987), p. 19
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)
God has overlooked the times of such ignorance, yet now he is telling mankind that they should all everywhere repent. Because he has set a day in which he purposes to judge the inhabited earth in righteousness by a man whom he has appointed, and he has furnished a guarantee to all men in that he has resurrected him from the dead.
paul of tarsus— Acts 17:30,31 New World Translation
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 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)
A story of innocence in a world of ignorance.
— Tag line of "The Boy in the Striped Pyjamas".
There are many aspects of the universe that still cannot be explained satisfactorily by science ; but ignorance only implies ignorance that may someday be conquered. To surrender to ignorance and call it God has always been premature, and it remains premature today.
Isaac Asimov— "The “Threat” of Creationism" in New York Times Magazine (14 June 1981) reprinted Science and Creationism (1984) edited by M. F. Ashley Montagu
Mathematics is the gate and key of the sciences... Neglect of mathematics works injury to all knowledge , since he who is ignorant of it cannot know the other sciences or the things of this world. And what is worse, men who are thus Ignorant are unable to perceive their own ignorance and so do not seek a remedy.
roger bacon— cited in: Morris Kline (1969) Mathematics and the physical world. p. 1
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
I’m not trying to frighten you, but only a fool makes predictions based on ignorance; I am not that sort of fool.
robert a. heinlein— Chapter 12 (p. 177)
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)
He skates saucily over great tracts of confessed ignorance.
john updike— On T S Matthews, and his biography of T. S. Eliot, Great Tom (1974), in The New Yorker (25 March 1985)
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".
The history of medicine proves that in so far as man seeks to know himself and face his whole nature, he has become free from bewildered fear, despondent shame, or arrant hypocrisy. As long as sex is dealt with in the current confusion of ignorance and sophistication, denial and indulgence, suppression and stimulation, punishment and exploitation, secrecy and display, it will be associated with a duplicity and indecency that lead neither to intellectual honesty nor human dignity.
alfred kinsey— Sexual Behaviour in the Human Male (1948)
I am utterly convinced that Science and Peace will triumph over ignorance and War, that nations will eventually unite not to destroy but to edify, and that the future will belong to those who have done the most for the sake of suffering humanity.
Louis Pasteur— As quoted in Louis Pasteur, Free Lance of Science (1960) by René Jules Dubos, Ch. 3 "Pasteur in Action"
