Quotes About Ignorance

It is a common sentence that Knowledge is power; but who hath duly considered or set forth the power of Ignorance? Knowledge slowly builds up what Ignorance in an hour pulls down. Knowledge, through patient and frugal centuries, enlarges discovery and makes record of it; Ignorance, wanting its day's dinner, lights a fire with the record, and gives a flavour to its one roast with the burnt souls of many generations.

Strength, strength it is that we want so much in this life, for what we call sin and sorrow have all one cause, and that is our weakness. With weakness comes ignorance, and with ignorance comes misery.

What is wrong is not the great discoveries of science—information is always better than ignorance, no matter what information or what ignorance. What is wrong is the belief behind the information, the belief that information will change the world. It won’t.

Any formal attack on ignorance is bound to fail because the masses are always ready to defend their most precious possession - their ignorance.

Most ignorance is vincible ignorance. We don't know because we don't want to know.

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

IGNORANCE I didn’t know love would make me this crazy, with my eyes like the river Ceyhun carrying me in its rapids out to sea,where every bit of shattered boat sinks to the bottom. An alligator lifts its head and swallows the ocean, then the ocean floor becomes a desert covering the alligator in sand drifts. Changes do happen. I do not know how, or what remains of what has disappeared into the absolute. I hear so many stories and explanations, but I keep quiet, because I don’t know anything, and because something I swallowed in the ocean has made me completely content with ignorance.

Of all ignorance, the ignorance of the educated is the most dangerous. Not only are educated people likely to have more influence, they are the last people to suspect that they don't know what they are talking about when they go outside their narrow fields.

God has bestowed two gifts on man: hope and ignorance. Ignorance is the better of the two.

It is an essential part of the scientific enterprise to admit ignorance, even to exult in ignorance as a challenge to future conquests.

Ignorance 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.

Systems 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.

The principal cause of suffering is craving. Once craving is eliminated, much suffering will be eliminated. Still more suffering will be eliminated once ignorance is eliminated. Both craving and ignorance are equally powerful defilements that cause suffering.

For a man’s life would become intolerable, if he knew what was going to happen to him. He would be made aware of future evils, and would suffer their agonies in advance, while he would get no joy of present blessings since he would know how they would end. Ignorance is the necessary condition of human happiness, and it has to be admitted that on the whole mankind observes that condition well. We are almost entirely ignorant of ourselves; absolutely of others. In ignorance, we find our bliss; in illusions, our happiness.

I remembered a time when my grandmother had asked me to explain television to her - the guts, not the funny pictures. There are things which cannot be taught in ten easy lessons, nor popularized for the masses; they take years of skull sweat. This be treason in an age when ignorance has come into its own and one man's opinion is as good as another's. But there it is. As Star says, the world is what it is - and doesn't forgive ignorance.

Democracies have been, and governments called, free; but the spirit of independence and the consciousness of unalienable rights, were never before transfused into the minds of a whole people....The feeling of equality which they proudly cherish does not proceed from an ignorance of their station, but from the knowledge of their rights; and it is this knowledge which will render it so exceedingly difficult for any tyrant ever to triumph over the liberties of our country.

I'm against ignorance. I'm against sloppy, emotional thinking. I'm against fashionable thinking. I am against the whole cliché of the moment.

But if we keep denying that there are problems with some male immigrants, then we will just drive the people into the arms of the right-wing populists. Without the ignorance or the trivialization on the part of all the political parties, there would be no Pegida or Alternative for Germany.

If we work for social change - and it is good to do such things - let us always do it with an awakened heart big enough for all. There is no enemy; there is only ignorance. There is no one to hate, only many to love.

Education, introspection, self-love and excellence are the only ways to overcome the wrath of ignorance

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

But what sin is to the moralist and crime to the jurist so to the scientific man is ignorance.

I know of no time in human history where ignorance was better than knowledge.

It'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.

Rather than bring the full force of our creativity and rationality to bear on the problems of ethics, social cohesion, and even spiritual experience, moderates merely ask that we relax our standard of adherence to ancient superstitions and taboos, while otherwise maintaining a belief system that was passed down to us from men and women whose lives were simply ravaged by their basic ignorance about the world.

The 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.

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

We are destined to be a barrier against the return of ignorance and barbarism. Old Europe will have to lean on our shoulders, and to hobble along by our side, under the monkish trammels of priests and kings, as she can. What a colossus shall we be when the southern continent comes up to our mark! What a stand will it seem as a ralliance for the reason and freedom of the globe!

Religious leaders will always avail themselves of public ignorance for their own purpose.

I 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.

It should be noted, as with so many legends and popularly accepted truths created out of political motivation: There, in fact, is no evidence that the hundreds of murders historically attributed to the werewolves of Gévaudan were actually caused by wolves. As with all witchhunts, the endless battle against ignorance requires one to always keep an open mind and sharp wits when considering such rumors - especially the rumors we choose to enjoy.

Why 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?

All that is necessary, as it seems to me, to convince any reasonable person that the Bible is simply and purely of human invention - of barbarian invention - is to read it. Read it as you would any other book; think of it as you would of any other; get the bandage of reverence from your eyes; drive from your heart the phantom of fear; push from the throne of your brain the cowled form of superstition - then read the Holy Bible, and you will be amazed that you ever, for one moment, supposed a being of infinite wisdom, goodness and purity, to be the author of such ignorance and of such atrocity.

I pretty much operate on adrenaline and ignorance.

My 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.

Ignorance is mere privation by which nothing can be produced: it is a vacuity in which the soul sits motionless and torpid for want of attraction: and, without knowing why, we always rejoice when we learn, and grieve when we forget.

Books and ideas are the most effective weapons against intolerance and ignorance.

I try to hold both history and wilderness in mind, that my poems may the true measure of things and stand against the unbalance and ignorance of our times.

Fortunately science, like that nature to which it belongs, is neither limited by time nor by space. It belongs to the world, and is of no country and no age. The more we know, the more we feel our ignorance; the more we feel how much remains unknown.

Luckily for me, most of my work is through a brand or client who approaches my agent. Before I began modeling, I never realized how many barriers there were for people with disabilities within the industry. I didn't realize how much prejudice and ignorance existed. That made me even more determined to break down the barriers and to wake up the industry to the fact that beauty shows up in all different shapes, sizes and abilities.

The media no longer ask those who know something to share that knowledge with the public. Instead they ask those who know nothing to represent the ignorance of the public and, in so doing, to legitimate it.

What ignorance there is in human minds.

Recognizing your own ignorance is the first step toward wisdom.

Listen, my father had written. Listen to hear if they are telling the truth or only part of the truth, for that is the lesson of history: that the victors tell the tale of their triumph in a manner to grant accolades to themselves and heap blame upon their rivals. Ask yourself if part of the story is being withheld by design or ignorance.

He said that there was one only good, namely, knowledge; and one only evil, namely, ignorance.

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

Though we do not have many poets, we certainly have more than we deserve, for we deserve none at all. It is ourselves that we are hurting by our stupidity and ignorance of poetry.

There is a time in every man's education when he arrives at the conviction that envy is ignorance; that imitation is suicide; that he must take himself for better, for worse, as his portion; that though the wide universe is full of good, no kernel of nourishing corn can come to him but through his toil bestowed on that plot of ground which is given to him to till. The power which resides in him is new in nature, and none but he knows what that is which he can do, nor does he know until he has tried.