Ignorance famous quotes
Last updated: Sep 5, 2024
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Indulgence in animal killing for the taste of the tongue is the grossest kind of ignorance
-- A. C. Bhaktivedanta Swami Prabhupada -
Three minutes thought would suffice to find this out; but thought is irksome and three minutes is a long time.
-- A. E. Housman -
The ignorance of the oppressed is strength for the oppressor.
-- A. R. Bernard -
Religion and science have a common ancestor - ignorance.
-- A.C. Grayling -
The ground for taking ignorance to be restrictive of freedom is that it causes people to make choices which they would not have made if they had seen what the realization of their choices involved.
-- A.J. Ayer -
Much of our ignorance is of ourselves. Our eyes are full of dust. Prejudice blinds us.
-- Abraham Coles -
The purely righteous do not complain of the dark, but increase the light; they do not complain of evil, but increase justice; they do not complain of heresy, but increase faith; they do not complain of ignorance, but increase wisdom.
-- Abraham Isaac Kook -
The sacred is in the ordinary...it is to be found in one's daily life, in one's neighbors, friends, and family, in one's own backyard...travel may be a flight from confronting the scared--this lesson can be easily lost. To be looking elsewhere for miracles is to me a sure sign of ignorance that everything is miraculous.
-- Abraham Maslow -
Ignorance was just as dynamic as knowledge, and it grew in the same proportion.
-- Abraham Verghese -
It is strictly and philosophically true in Nature and reason that there is no such thing as chance or accident; it being evident that these words do not signify anything really existing, anything that is truly an agent or the cause of any event; but they signify merely men's ignorance of the real an immediate cause.
-- Adam Clarke -
There is no such thing as chance or accident; the words merely signify our ignorance of some real and immediate cause.
-- Adam Clarke -
The field is a halfway house, halfway between the detail of those intimately known places and the ignorance of a landscape view ... The essence of a field is that the cultural accommodates the natural there. The human being makes room for and makes use of those organisms that are not him. In that way the field is a poem to symbiosis, and a human contract with the natural.
-- Adam Nicolson -
Mostly I make lists for projects. This can be daunting. Breaking something big into its constituent parts will help you organize your thoughts, but it can also force you to confront the depth of your ignorance and the hugeness of the task. That's OK. The project may be the lion, but the list is your whip.
-- Adam Savage -
This is one of those cases in which the imagination is baffled by the facts.
-- Adam Smith -
Ignorance of the law excuses no man from practicing it.
-- Addison Mizner -
Who but the Atman is capable of removing the bonds of ignorance, passion and self-interested action?
-- Adi Shankara -
I believe in the forgiveness of sin and the redemption of ignorance.
-- Adlai E. Stevenson -
On this shrunken globe, men can no longer live as strangers.
-- Adlai E. Stevenson -
Ignorance is stubborn and prejudice is hard.
-- Adlai E. Stevenson -
William Henry Flower the Anglican too praised evolution as a cleansing solvent, dissolving the dross which had 'encrusted' Christianity 'in the days of ignorance and superstition'.
-- Adrian Desmond -
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.
-- Adrienne Monnier -
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 -
What has been done is little-scarcely a beginning; yet it is much in comparison with the total blank of a century past. And our knowledge will, we are easily persuaded, appear in turn the merest ignorance to those who come after us. Yet it is not to be despised, since by it we reach up groping to touch the hem of the garment of the Most High.
-- Agnes Mary Clerke -
True wisdom is less presuming than folly. The wise man doubteth often, and changeth his mind; the fool is obstinate, and doubteth not; he knoweth all things but his own ignorance.
-- Akhenaton -
but ignorance is a kind of insanity in the human animal. People who delight in torturing defenseless children or tiny creatures are in reality insane. The terrible thing is that people who are madmen in private may wear a totally bland and innocent expression in public.
-- Akira Kurosawa -
Half of disbelief in Allah in the world is caused by people who make religion look ugly due to their bad conduct and ignorance
-- Al-Ghazali -
These latter institutions [the civil service, trade unions, media of all kinds], notably of course television, but more subtly the written press, are quite spectacular powers of unreason and ignorance.
-- Alain Badiou -
Curiosity takes ignorance seriously - and is confident enough to admit when it's in the dark. It is aware of not knowing. And then it sets out to do something about it.
-- Alain de Botton -
Regulators have not been able to achieve the level of future clarity required to act pre-emptively. The problem is not lack of regulation but unrealistic expectations. What we confront in reality is uncertainty, some of it frighteningly so ...
-- Alan Greenspan -
Greenspan, who knew so much more than most, knew far less than most supposed ...
-- Alan Greenspan -
Senator, we are groping for understanding, the knowledge you assume I possess doesn't exist' - 'The only effective regulation lies in the propensity of customers to choose alternatives, of investors to move their funds elsewhere and of labour to acquire technical skills' - 'Senator, if I seem clear to you, you must have misunderstood me' - 'Unfortunately, Senator, nobody knows where the next innovative idea is coming from. Political decisions are never random and will always lose out to innovative alternatives
-- Alan Greenspan -
The Tao belongs neither to knowing nor not knowing. Knowing is false understanding; not knowing is blind ignorance. If you really understand the Tao beyond doubt, it's like the empty sky. Why drag in right and wrong?
-- Alan Watts -
The agnostic, the skeptic, is neurotic, but this does not imply a false philosophy; it implies the discovery of facts to which he does not know how to adapt himself. The intellectual who tries to escape from neurosis by escaping from the facts is merely acting on the principle that “where ignorance is bliss, ‘tis folly to be wise.
-- Alan Watts -
On the whole, men are more good than bad; that, however, isn't the real point. But they are more or less ignorant, and it is this that we call vice or virtue; the most incorrigible vice being that of an ignorance that fancies it knows everything and therefore claims for itself the right to kill. The soul of the murderer is blind; and there can be no true goodness nor true love without the utmost clear-sightedness.
-- Albert Camus -
Condemnation without investigation is the height of ignorance
-- Albert Einstein -
Sadly, the doctrinal ignorance in the pulpits of today is being replicated in the doctrinal ignorance and indifference of the pews, and the people are not even seeing the picture, much less getting it.
-- Albert Mohler -
That 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 Pike -
Pride is not the heritage of man; humility should dwell with frailty, and atone for ignorance, error, and imperfection.
-- Albert Pike -
We cannot possibly let ourselves get frozen into regarding everyone we do not know as an absolute stranger.
-- Albert Schweitzer -
Through ignorance, through faith, through intelligence, through trickery and cunning, through illumination, the reader rewrites the text with the same words of the original but under another heading, re-creating it, as it were, in the very act of bringing it into being.
-- Alberto Manguel -
The last word in ignorance is the man who says of an animal or plant: 'What good is it?
-- Aldo Leopold -
The last word in ignorance is the man who says of an animal or plant, "What good is it?" If the land mechanism as a whole is good, then every part is good, whether we understand it or not. If the biota, in the course of aeons, has built something we like but do not understand, then who but a fool would discard seemingly useless parts? To keep every cog and wheel is the first precaution of intelligent tinkering.
-- Aldo Leopold -
The man who comes back through the Door in the Wall will never be quite the same as the man who went out. He will be wiser but less sure, happier but less self-satisfied, humbler in acknowledging his ignorance yet better equipped to understand the relationship of words to things, of systematic reasoning to the unfathomable mystery which it tries, forever vainly, to comprehend
-- Aldous Huxley -
The pleasures of ignorance are as great, in their way, as the pleasures of knowledge.
-- Aldous Huxley -
Reality cannot be ignored except at a price; and the longer the ignorance is persisted in, the higher and more terrible becomes the price that must be paid.
-- Aldous Huxley -
Henry'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 Huxley -
Human beings act in a great variety of irrational ways, but all of them seem to be capable, if given a fair chance, of making a reasonable choice in the light of available evidence. Democratic institutions can be made to work only if all concerned do their best to impart knowledge and to encourage rationality. But today, in the world's most powerful democracy, the politicians and the propagandists prefer to make nonsense of democratic procedures by appealing almost exclusively to the ignorance and irrationality of the electors.
-- Aldous Huxley -
It is time in the West to defend not so much human rights as human obligations.
-- Aleksandr Solzhenitsyn -
Traders lose because the game is hard, or out of ignorance, or lack of discipline or because of both.
-- Alexander Elder -
Cruelty to animals is one of the most significant vices of a low and ignoble people. Wherever one notices them, they constitute a sign of ignorance and brutality which cannot be painted over even by all the evidence of wealth and luxury.
-- Alexander von Humboldt -
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 -
Blind and naked ignorance delivers brawling judgments, unashamed, on all things all day long
-- Alfred Lord Tennyson -
The hope that poverty and ignorance may gradually be extinguished derives indeed much support from the steady progress of the working classes during the 19th century.
-- Alfred Marshall -
Not ignorance, but ignorance of ignorance, is the death of knowledge.
-- Alfred North Whitehead -
There is no capital more useful than intellect and wisdom, and there is no indigence more injurious than ignorance and unawareness.
-- Ali ibn Abi Talib -
Had there not been five bad qualities, all the people would have been righteous. Contentment with ignorance; love for worldly life; miserliness inspite of much wealth; ostentation in (good) deeds; and pride in their own intelligence.
-- Ali ibn Abi Talib -
No wealth like education and no poverty like ignorance
-- Ali ibn Abi Talib -
It was easy to present figures demonstrating the contrast between lead work in the United States under conditions of neglect and ignorance, and comparable work in England and Germany, under intelligent control.
-- Alice Hamilton -
Child abuse damages a person for life and that damage is in no way diminished by the ignorance of the perpetrator. It is only with the uncovering of the complete truth as it affects all those involved that a genuinely viable solution can be found to the dangers of child abuse.
-- Alice Miller -
It is not true that evil, destructiveness , and perversion inevitably form part of human existence, no matter how often this is maintained. But it is true that we are daily producing more evil and, with it, an ocean of suffering for millions that is absolutely avoidable. When one day the ignorance arising from childhood repression is eliminated and humanity has awakened, an end can be put to this production of evil.
-- Alice Miller -
I dont think ignorance is a way that you gain distance on something.
-- Alice Sebold -
Ignorance, arrogance, and racism have bloomed as Superior Knowledge in all too many universities.
-- Alice Walker -
There are two threats to reason, the opinion that one knows the truth about the most important things and the opinion that there is no truth about them. Both of these opinions are fatal to philosophy; the first asserts that the quest for truth is unnecessary, while the second asserts that it is impossible. The Socratic knowledge of ignorance, which I take to be the beginning point of all philosophy, defines the sensible middle ground between two extremes.
-- Allan Bloom -
I ask the political economists and the moralists if they have ever calculated the number of individuals who must be condemned to misery, overwork, demoralisation, degradation, rank ignorance, overwhelming misfortune and utter penury in order to produce one rich man.
-- Almeida Garrett -
Every time that a people which has long crouched in slavery and ignorance is moved to its lowest depths there appear monsters and heroes, prodigies of crime and prodigies of virtue.
-- Alphonse de Lamartine -
Human ordeals thrive on ignorance. To understand a problem with clarity is already half way towards solving it.
-- Amartya Sen -
The elimination of ignorance, of illiteracy... and of needless inequalities in opportunities (is) to be seen as objectives that are valued for their own sake. They expand our freedom to lead the lives we have reason to value, and these elementary capabilities are of importance on their own
-- Amartya Sen -
We ask for what reason our Lord was unwilling to state the time of His coming (cf. Mk. 13:31-32). If we ask it, we shall not find it is owing to ignorance, but to wisdom. For it was not to our advantage to know; in order that we being ignorant of the actual moments of judgment to come, might ever be as it were on guard, and set on the watch-tower of virtue, and so avoid the habits of sin; lest the day of the Lord should come upon us in the midst of our wickedness.
-- Ambrose -
Knowledge is the small part of ignorance that we arrange and classify.
-- Ambrose Bierce -
As a means of dispensing formulated ignorance our boasted public school system is not without merit; it spreads out education sufficiently thin to give everyone enough to make him a more competent fool than he would have been without it...
-- Ambrose Bierce -
Learning, n. The kind of ignorance distinguishing the studious.
-- Ambrose Bierce -
Truth can be outraged by silence quite as cruelly as by speech.
-- Amelia Barr -
Educate ourselves; educate other people, the population in general, to fight fear and ignorance, to eliminate little by little the subjection to nature and natural forces which our economy has not yet mastered.
-- Amilcar Cabral -
To be ignorant of one's ignorance is the malady of the ignorant.
-- Amos Bronson Alcott -
Ignorance is innocence - stupidity comes with experience
-- Amos Bronson Alcott -
The more one endeavors to sound the depths of his ignorance the deeper the chasm appears.
-- Amos Bronson Alcott -
The library is every child's lighthouse. It is every person's sanctuary. It is every town and county's fortress in the face of ignorance, intrusion and bad behavior.
-- Amy Bloom -
A person is never happy except at the price of some ignorance.
-- Anatole France -
Your ignorance keeps dismembering every piece of patience I have left.
-- Andrea Gibson -
I envy your ignorance, I hear that it's bliss.
-- Ani DiFranco -
To remove ignorance is an important branch of benevolence.
-- Ann Plato -
Ignorance of true pleasure more frequently than temptation to that which is false, leads to vice.
-- Ann Radcliffe -
Of all the wastes of human ignorance perhaps the most extravagant and costly to human growth has been the waste of the distinctive powers of womanhood after the child-bearing age.
-- Anna Garlin Spencer -
We are hurtling back into a Soviet abyss, into an information vacuum that spells death from our own ignorance. All we have left is the internet, where information is still freely available. For the rest, if you want to go on working as a journalist, it's total servility to Putin. Otherwise, it can be death, the bullet, poison, or trial—whatever our special services, Putin's guard dogs, see fit.
-- Anna Politkovskaya -
Only ignorance! only ignorance! how can you talk about only ignorance? Don't you know that it is the worst thing in the world, next to wickedness? -- and which does the most mischief heaven only knows. If people can say, `Oh! I did not know, I did not mean any harm,' they think it is all right.
-- Anna Sewell -
Well, but you affirm that virtue is only elicited by temptation; - and you think that a woman cannot be too little exposed to temptation, or too little acquainted with vice, or anything connected therewith – It must be, either, that you think she is essentially so vicious, or so feeble-minded that she cannot withstand temptation, - and though she may be pure and innocent as long as she is kept in ignorance and restraint, yet, being destitute of real virtue, to teach her how to sin is at once to make her a sinner...
-- Anne Bronte -
There is nothing worse than a sharp image of a fuzzy concept.
-- Ansel Adams -
Wisdom tends to grow in proportion to one's awareness of one's ignorance.
-- Anthony de Mello -
I wish you would read a little poetry sometimes. Your ignorance cramps my conversation.
-- Anthony Hope -
We're all caught up in circumstances, and we're all good and evil. When you're really hungry, for instance, you'll do anything to survive. I think the most evil thing - well, maybe that's too strong - but certainly a very evil thing is judgment, the sin of ignorance.
-- Anthony Hopkins -
Is it not ignorance that we share? A lie takes two. The truth we find alone.
-- Anthony Marais -
Novelty does not require intelligence, but ignorance, which is why the young excel in this branch.
-- Anthony Marais -
Faith is a term that makes ignorance sound like a virtue
-- Anthony Provenzano -
The enemy is not individuals, churches, 'ex-gay' organisations or political parties; the enemy is ignorance. Change is created by focusing our energies on overcoming the latter instead of attacking the former.
-- Anthony Venn-Brown -
The theoretician believes in logic and believes that he despises dreams, intuition, and poetry. He does not recognize that these three fairies have only disguised themselves in order to dazzle him.... He does not know that he owes his greatest discoveries to them.
-- Antoine de Saint-Exupery -
I am now and have always been a stranger to the realm of practical matters.
-- Anton Chekhov
