Quotes About Ignorance

Montaigne said three hundred years ago, 'Nothing is so firmly believed as that which is least known.

The purpose of history is to explain the present—to say why the world around us is the way it is. History tells us what is important in our world, and how it came to be. It tells us why the things we value are the things we should value. And it tells us what is to be ignored, or discarded. That is true power—profound power. The power to define a whole society.

He had a term for people like this: temporal provincials—people who were ignorant of the past, and proud of it.

He had a term for people like this: temporal provincials—people who were ignorant of the past, and proud of it. Temporal provincials were convinced that the present was the only time that mattered, and that anything that had occurred earlier could be safely ignored.

They didn't understand what they were doing. I'm afraid that will be on the tombstone of the human race.

Mensen zijn dom. Op een trommel slaan om een beer aan het dansen te krijgen, terwijl we de sterren zouden willen ontroeren.

God save us from people who think they're smarter than they actually are.

We thought she was alright, we thought her sorrows were ordinary ones, We had no idea.

For Bulgakov, however, the greatest underlying source of unease, amounting at times to despair, was something less tangible though very real to him, since it occurs as an ever-present refrain throughout these stories. This was the sense of being a lone soldier of reason and enlightenment pitted against the vast, dark, ocean-like mass of peasant ignorance and superstition... [in] the fearsome, pre-literate, mediaeval world of the peasantry

There is no darkness but ignorance. – Shakespeare

If your ambition is to maximize short-term gain without regard to the long-term cost, you are better off not knowing the cost. If you want to preserve your personal immunity to the hard problems, it's better never to really understand those problems. There is an upside to ignorance, and a downside to knowledge. Knowledge makes life messier. It makes it a bit more difficult for a person who wishes to shrink the world to a worldview.

We study natural stupidity instead of artificial intelligence.

It was like a broken slot machine in the casino that pays off every time. It would keep paying off until someone said something about it; but no one who played the slot machine had any interest in pointing out that it was broken.

Ignorance allows people to disregard the consequences of their actions. And sometimes it leads to consequences even they did not intend.

Trump's budget, like the social forces behind it, is powered by a perverse desire—to remain ignorant.

There is an upside to ignorance, and a downside to knowledge. Knowledge makes life messier. It makes it a bit more difficult for a person who wishes to shrink the world to a worldview.

The frantic stupidity of Wall Street's stock order routers and algorithms was simply an extension into the computer of the willful ignorance of its salespeople.

It's one thing to bet on red or black and know that you are betting on red or black. It's another to bet on a form of red and not to know it.

The effect on James of being ignored by the people who stood to benefit the most from his work was to distance himself even further from those people.

Trump's budget, like the social forces behind it, is powered by a perverse desire—to remain ignorant. Donald Trump didn't invent this desire. He was just its ultimate expression.

My book asked: What happens when the people in charge of managing these risks, along with the experts who understand them, have no interest in them?

The government was the mission of an entire society: why was the society undermining it? "I'm routinely appalled by how profoundly ignorant even highly educated people are when it comes to the structure and function of our government," she said. "The sense of identity as Citizen has been replaced by Consumer.

What was the point of laying out the odds of a gamble if the person taking it either didn't believe the numbers or didn't want to know them.

Never ask questions if you might not want to know the answers, lest you are pulled into those stories and the truths they reveal. Sometimes ignorance is better. It would probably not be so popular otherwise.