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The endless cycle of idea and action, Endless invention, endless experiment, Brings knowledge of motion, but not of stillness; Knowledge of speech, but not of silence; Knowledge of words, and ignorance of the Word. All our knowledge brings us nearer to our ignorance, All our ignorance brings us nearer to death, But nearness to death no nearer to God. Where is the Life we have lost in living? Where is the wisdom we have lost in knowledge? Where is the knowledge we have lost in information? The cycles of Heaven in twenty centuries Bring us farther from God and nearer to the Dust.
T. S. EliotThere is natural ignorance and there is artificial ignorance. I should say at the present moment the artificial ignorance is about eighty-five per cent.
Ezra PoundIf we go back to the beginning, we shall find that ignorance and fear created the gods; that fancy, enthusiasm, or deceit adorned them; that weakness worships them; that credulity preserves them and that custom, respect and tyranny support them in order to make the blindness of men serve their own interests. If the ignorance of nature gave birth to gods, the knowledge of nature is calculated to destroy them.
Bill MaherWhen grown people speak of the innocence of children, they dont really know what they mean. Pressed, they will go a step further and say, Well, ignorance then. The child is neither. There is no crime which a boy of eleven had not envisaged long ago. His only innocence is, he may not be old enough to desire the fruits of it...his ignorance is, he does not know how to commit it...
William FaulknerNow, ignorance is one thing, ignorance can be cured. But many of the Republican leaders opposing this research know better.
Ron ReaganScience is being daily more and more personified and anthromorphized into a god. By and by they will say that science took our nature upon him, and sent down his only begotten son, Charles Darwin, or Huxley, into the world so that those who believe in him, &c.; and they will burn people for saying that science, after all, is only an expression for our ignorance of our own ignorance.
Samuel ButlerIGNORANCE I didnโt 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 donโt know anything, and because something I swallowed in the ocean has made me completely content with ignorance.
RumiIgnorance is a self-generating state of mind; one of its characteristics is that it doesn't recognize itself as ignorance.
Jane SmileyThe distance we feel from our actions is proportionate to our ignorance of them; our ignorance, in turn, is largely a measure of the length of the chain of intermediaries between ourselves and our acts.
John LachsPeople always fear change. People feared electricity when it was invented, didn't they? People feared coal, they feared gas-powered engines... There will always be ignorance, and ignorance leads to fear. But with time, people will come to accept their silicon masters.
Bill GatesPeople used to say, "Ignorance is no excuse." Today, ignorance is no problem. After all, you have "a right to your own opinion" - and self-esteem to boot.
Thomas SowellIs 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 CohenWe live on an island surrounded by a sea of ignorance. As our island of knowledge grows, so does the shore of our ignorance.
John Archibald WheelerIgnorance 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 WellesPush hard to get better, become smarter, grow your devotion to the truth, fuel your commitment to beauty, refine your emotional intelligence, hone your dreams, negotiate with your shadow, cure your ignorance, shed your pettiness, heighten your drive to look for the best in people, and soften your heart -- even as you always accept yourself for exactly who you are with all of your so-called imperfections.
Rob BrezsnyIn Buddhism, ignorance as the root cause of suffering refers to a fundamental misperception of the true nature of the self and all phenomena.
Dalai LamaScientific men can hardly escape the charge of ignorance with regard to the precise effect of the impact of modern science upon the mode of living of the people and upon their civilisation.
Frederick SoddyI think the way my modeling career took off, I did not expect. It was definitely not a ripple in my mind. I just never thought it was going to happen like this. I'm just here and I'm having fun and I'm trying to smile and not think about it too much. That's the hardest thing in life. I think about things way too much. Ignorance is totally bliss.
Cara DelevingneIgnorance has no beginning, but it has an end. There is a beginning but no end to knowledge.
B.K.S. IyengarThe great mass of people judge well of things, for they are in natural ignorance, which is man's true state.
Blaise PascalI found myself desiring and knowing less and less, until I could say in utter astonishment: "I know nothing, I want nothing." Earlier I was sure of so many things, now I am sure of nothing. But I feel I have lost nothing by not knowing, because all my knowledge was false. My not knowing was in itself knowledge of the fact that all my knowledge is ignorance, that "I do not know" is the only true statement the mind can make....I do not claim to know what you do not. In fact, I know much less than you do.
Sri Nisargadatta MaharajIntelligent people know they are intelligent. They also know that one person cannot know all, hence a person is not stupid simply because he is ignorant of one thing or another. They know that, to another intelligent person, they will not appear stupid in asking for an explanation of what they do not know, and so their ignorance on any particular issue does not become an embarrassment.
Lynsay SandsTherefore let us repent and pass from ignorance to knowledge, from foolishness to wisdom, from licentiousness to self-control, from injustice to righteousness, from godlessness to God.
Clement of AlexandriaThe scientist who yields anything to theology, however slight, is yielding to ignorance and false pretenses, and as certainly as if he granted that a horse-hair put into a bottle of water will turn into a snake.
H. L. MenckenPeace and the survival of life on earth as we know it are threatened by human activities which lack a commitment to humanitarian values. Destruction of nature and nature's resources result from ignorance, greed and lack of respect for the earth's living things.
Dalai LamaAnybody can write a three-volume novel. It merely requires a complete ignorance of both life and literature.
Oscar WildeIn careless ignorance they think it civilization, when in reality it is a portion of their slavery...To ravage, to slaughter, to usurp under false pretenses, they call empire; and where they make a desert, they call it peace.
TacitusIf man puts his honor first in relying upon himself, knowing himself and applying himself, this in self-reliance, self-assertion, and freedom, he then strives to rid himself of the ignorance which makes a strange impenetrable object a barrier and a hindrance to his self-knowledge.
Max StirnerIn friendship, as in love, we are often happier through our ignorance than our knowledge.
William ShakespeareThat which causes us trials shall yield us triumph: and that which make our hearts ache shall fill us with gladness. The only true happiness is to learn, to advance, and to improve: which could not happen unless we had commenced with error, ignorance, and imperfection. We must pass through the darkness, to reach the light.
Albert PikeAs men are not able to fight against death, misery, ignorance, they have taken it into their heads, in order to be happy, not to think of them at all.
Blaise PascalA true teacher does not terrorize ignorant students, because a true teacher knows that it is his job to cure ignorance.
Miriam Defensor SantiagoBut the upside of painful knowledge is so much greater than the downside of blissful ignorance.
Sheryl SandbergIgnorance breeds monsters to fill up the vacancies of the soul that are unoccupied by the verities of knowledge.
Horace MannRespectfully, 'Awkward Black Girl' was never meant to be politically correct. We poke fun at ignorance.
Issa RaeWe 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!
Thomas JeffersonReviewers do not read books with much care . . . their profession is more given to stupidity and malice and literary ignorance even than the profession of novelist.
Anthony BurgessThe first and foremost priority is to finish the unfinished task which the founding fathers of India set out for us at the time of our independence: to get rid of chronic poverty, ignorance, and disease, which have afflicted millions and millions of our people.
Manmohan SinghAs science pushes forward, ignorance and superstition gallop around the flanks and bite science in the rear with big dark teeth.
Philip Jose FarmerHenry's universe was modeled on the highball. It was a mixture in which half a pint of the fizziest philosophical and scientific ideas all but drowned a small jigger of immediate experience, most of it strictly sexual. Broken reeds are seldom good mixers. They're far too busy with their ideas, their sensuality and their psychosomatic complaints to be able to take an interest in other people - even their own wives and children. They live in a state of the most profound voluntary ignorance, not knowing anything about anybody, but abounding in preconceived opinions about everything.
Aldous HuxleyI donโt think weโll get rid of schools any time soon, certainly not in my lifetime, but if weโre going to change whatโs rapidly becoming a disaster of ignorance, we need to realize that the institution โschoolsโ very well, but it does not โeducateโ; thatโs inherent in the design of the thing. Itโs not the fault of bad teachers or too little money spent. Itโs just impossible for education and schooling to be the same thing.
John Taylor GattoOften 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 AugustineBeing unable to cure death, wretchedness, and ignorance, men have decided, in order to be happy, not to think about such things.
Blaise PascalStatistics, one may hope, will improve gradually, and become good for something. Meanwhile, it is to be feared the crabbed satirist was partly right, as things go: "A judicious man," says he, "looks at Statistics, not to get knowledge, but to save himself from having ignorance foisted on him."
Thomas Carlyle