Popular quotes about Ignorance! Wisdom and inspiration are here! | page 20
There's a lot of ignorance about how long it takes to write a novel. There's a lot of ignorance about how long a novel is in your head before you start to write it.
John IrvingLearning -the kind of ignorance affected by (and affecting) civilized races, as distinguished from ignorance, the sort of learning incurred by savages. See nonsense.
Ambrose BierceEvery principle is a judgment, every judgment the outcome of experience, and experience is only acquired by the exercise of the senses; whence it follows that religious principles bear upon nothing whatever and are not in the slightest innate. Ignorance and fear, you will repeat to them, ignorance and fear - those are the twin bases of every religion.
Marquis de SadeNever get to the point where you will be ashamed to ask anybody for information. The ignorant man will always be ignorant if he fears that by asking another for information he will display ignorance. Better once display your ignorance of a certain subject than always know nothing of it.
Booker T. WashingtonIn Buddhist teaching, ignorance is considered the fundamental cause of violence - ignorance... about the separation of self and other... about the consequences of our actions.
Sharon SalzbergThe ethical rule is from Samuel Johnson who believed that maintenance of easily removable ignorance by a responsible office holder was treacherous malfeasance in meeting moral obligation. The prudential rule is that underlying the old Warner & Swasey advertisement for machine tools: "The man who needs a new machine tool, and hasn't bought it, is already paying for it". The Warner & Swasey rule also applies, I believe, to thinking tools. If you don't have the right thinking tools, you, and the people you seek to help, are already suffering from your easily removable ignorance.
Charlie MungerThe world demands I make good choices on no information, and then blames my maidenhood for my mistakes, as if my maidenhood were responsible for my ignorance. Ignorance is not stupidity, but it might as well be. And I do not like feeling stupid.
Lois McMaster BujoldGod has bestowed two gifts on man: hope and ignorance. Ignorance is the better of the two.
Victor HugoI do sometimes accuse people of ignorance, but that is not intended to be an insult. I'm ignorant of lots of things. Ignorance is something that can be remedied by education.
Richard DawkinsIgnorance is in relationship to content; it is not just a spirit of ignorance. In verse 21 it speaks of "the truth in Jesus." Truth is content, truth has something to do with reason. Truth has something to do with the rational creature that God has made us. The dilemma here in the internal world is not just some sort of grey fog, it is in relationship to content.
Francis SchaefferIt is an essential part of the scientific enterprise to admit ignorance, even to exult in ignorance as a challenge to future conquests.
Richard DawkinsStand up to hypocrisy. If you don't, the hypocrites will teach. Stand up to ignorance, because if you don't, the ignorant will run free to spread ignorance like a disease.
Suzy KassemIs there a wrong way to say "I don't know"? Yes. When we declare ignorance, it should be a) honest and b) in the spirit of opening ourselves up to hearing, to learning, to receiving. When we say "I don't know" under these conditions, the words can forge connection, healing, growth. But when we resist or disavow knowledge, when we profess ignorance as a way of donning armor and evading accountability, then we make a mockery of those words, and we rupture connections not only with others but within ourselves, within our souls.
Leah Hager CohenIgnorance sheer ignorance. There is no confidence to equal it. It's only when you know something about a profession that you are timid or careful.
Orson WellesUnfortunately, we live at a moment in which ignorance appears to be one of the defining features of American political and cultural life. Ignorance has become a form of weaponized refusal to acknowledge the violence of the past, and revels in a culture of media spectacles in which public concerns are translated into private obsessions, consumerism and fatuous entertainment.
Henry GirouxSystems of religious error have been adopted in times of ignorance. It has been the interest of tyrannical kings, popes, and prelates to maintain these errors. When the clouds of ignorance began to vanish and the people grew more enlightened, there was no other way to keep them in error but to prohibit their altering their religious opinions by severe persecuting laws. In this way persecution became general throughout Europe.
Oliver EllsworthThe first thing the reasonable man must do is to be content with a very little knowledge and a very great deal of ignorance. The second thing he must do is to make the utmost possible use of the knowledge he has and not waste his energy crying for the moon. The third thing he must do is try and see clearly where his knowledge ends and his ignorance begins.
Arthur David RitchieFullness of knowledge always and necessarily means some understanding of the depths of our ignorance, and that is always conducive to both humility and reverence.
Robert Andrews MillikanIgnorance, vulnerability, fear, anger, and desire are expressions of the infinite potential of your buddha nature. There's nothing inherently wrong or right with making such choices. The fruit of Buddhist practice is simply the recognition that these and other mental afflictions are nothing more or less than choices available to us because our real nature is infinite in scope.
Yongey Mingyur Rinpochemaybe we try too hard to be remembered, waking to the glowing yellow disc in ignorance, swearing that today will be the day, today we will make something of our lives. what if we are so busy searching for worth that we miss the sapphire sky and cackling blackbird. what else is missing? maybe our steps are too straight and our paths too narrow and not overlapping. maybe when they overlap someone in another country lights a candle, a couple resolves their argument, a young man puts down his silver gun and walks away.
Naomi Shihab NyeThe world, as we know it, is coming to an end. The world as the center of the universe, the world divided from the heavens, the world bound by horizons in which love is reserved for members of the in-group: that is the world that is passing away. Apocalypse does not point to a fiery Armageddon but to the fact that our ignorance and complacency are coming to an end.
Joseph CampbellUncertainty that comes from knowledge (knowing what you don't know) is different from uncertainty coming from ignorance.
Isaac AsimovIgnorance and fear are twins whose mother is slavery and whose father is oppression, and the mentality of the whole family is that of slaves.
Ameen RihaniIt is an unfortunate fact that every man who seeks to disseminate knowledge must contend not only against ignorance itself, but against false instruction as well. No sooner do we deem ourselves free from a particularly gross superstition, than we are confronted by some enemy to learning who would set aside all the intellectual progress of years, and plunge us back into the darkness of mediaeval disbelief.
H. P. LovecraftEach human being can at once be a fighter and forgiver. When self-doubt tortures him, he most play the role of a fighter. And when his own ignorance humiliates him, he must play the role of a forgiver.
Sri ChinmoyIt's interesting to be an adult and to have that level of ignorance about something, because the nice part about is you get that discovery. The learning curve is so rich and steep.
Demetri MartinThe thief who is in prison is not necessarily more dishonest than his fellows at large, but mostly one who, through ignorance or stupidity [or racism or poverty! - Draffan] steals in a way that is not customary. He snatches a loaf from the baker's counter and is promptly run into gaol. Another man snatches bread from the table of hundreds of widows and orphans and similar credulous souls who do not know the ways of company promoters; and, as likely as not, he is run into Parliament.
George Bernard ShawThe ignorant one does not see his ignorance as he basks in its darkness; nor does the knowledgeable one see his own knowledge, for he basks in its light
Ibn ArabiAny 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.
R. Scott BakkerI am not sure that Christ would have been very satisfied to foresee that He would be looked upon principally as a redeemer and nailed forever upon the cross by human ignorance. It seems to me that He above all desired to bring men a message of truth, that He wanted to heal them of their faults by making an appeal to all their energy; He shook them as much as He could, He did not seek to spare them the trouble.
Adrienne MonnierThe ordinary man says in his ignorance, "My religion is the sole religion, my religion is the best." But when his heart is illuminated by the true knowledge, he knows that beyond all the battles of sects and of sectaries presides the one, indivisible, eternal and omnipresent Benediction.
RamakrishnaWhy should we, however, in economics, have to plead ignorance of the sort of facts on which, in the case of a physical theory, a scientist would certainly be expected to give precise information?
Friedrich August von HayekMy ignorance would require a volume to itself. Between its covers would be preserved a record of the spurious model of all creation I had in my head, a prelapsarian construct, uncorrupted by the facts.
Peter BlegvadOften a non-Christian knows something about the earth, the heavens, and the other parts of the world, about the motions and orbits of the stars and even their sizes and distances... and this knowledge he holds with certainty from reason and experience. It is thus offensive and disgraceful for an unbeliever to hear a Christian talk nonsense about such things, claiming that what he is saying is based in Scripture. We should do all that we can to avoid such an embarrassing situation, which people see as ignorance in the Christian and laugh to scorn.
Saint AugustineIn 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.
Rupert SheldrakePastoureau combines a charming, conversational tone with a haughtiness I found entirely endearing. A director of studies at the Ecole Pratique des Hautes Etudes at the Sorbonne in Paris, he writes from a position of professorial confidence. He has conducted extensive research into the history of colour for a quarter century and his aim is to correct misapprehensions and banish ignorance. His style is not to inquire, explore or interrogate, in the fashion of academic studies today. It is to impart knowledge.
Sebastian Smee