Quotes About Ignorance

In truth, knowledge is a great and very useful quality; those who despise it give evidence enough of their stupidity. Yet I do not set its value at that extreme measure that some attribute to it, such as the philosopher Herillus, who find in it the sovereign good and think it has the power to make us wise and happy.

For being the more learned, they are none the less fools.

Did I know myself less, I might perhaps venture to handle something or other to the bottom, and to be deceived in my own inability; but sprinkling here one word and there another, patterns cut from several pieces and scattered without design and without engaging myself too far, I am not responsible for them, or obliged to keep close to my subject, without varying at my own liberty and pleasure, and giving up myself to doubt and uncertainty, and to my own governing method, ignorance.

The more simply we entrust ourself to Nature the more wisely we do so. Oh what a soft and delightful pillow, and what a sane one on which to rest a well-schooled head, are ignorance and unconcern.

There is an abecedarian ignorance that precedes knowledge, and a doctoral ignorance that comes after it

A falta de educação, a ignorância, a simplicidade de espírito, a franqueza aliam-se em geral à ingenuidade. A curiosidade, a sutileza, o saber acarretam a malícia. A humildade, o temor, a obediência, a bondade elevada até a fraqueza e que constitui o alicerce sobre o qual assenta a conservação da sociedade humana, são peculiares a uma alma vazia, dócil, e presumindo pouco de si.

There is a plague on Man: his opinion that he knows something.

Nichts wird so fest geglaubt wie das, was wir am wenigsten wissen.

jamás la filosofía me parece tan razonable como cuando combate y reconoce nuestra presunción y vanidad, cuando de buena fe confiesa la irresolución, debilidad e ignorancia humanas.

Wonder is the foundation of all... Wonder is the foundation of all philosophy, inquiry the progress, ignorance the end.

I once took pleasure some place in seeing men, through piety, take a vow of ignorance, as of chastity, poverty, penitence. It is also castrating our disorderly appetites, to blunt that cupidity that pricks us on to the study of books, and to deprive the soul of that voluptuous complacency which tickles us with the notion of being learned.

Unfortunately, stupidity, like rust and weeds and lies and mould, tends to spread.

Of course, the world had always been crowded with mishaps and disasters, just as it had also been graced with fine achievements and beautiful endeavors which the media tended to ignore—if only because honor and contentment were hard to capture on film.

People know what they do; they frequently know why they do what they do; but what they don't know is what what they do does.

One must be a little foolish if one does not want to be even more stupid.

We adults have transformed our society of the spectacle into a pedagogical society whose overwhelming competition, willfully ignorant, has eclipsed the school and the university. The media long ago took over the function of teaching— the time when one hears and sees, the time of seduction and consequence.

There are two competing trends in the world today: one is to create a planetary civilization that is tolerant, scientific, and prosperous, but the other glorifies anarchy and ignorance that could rip the fabric of our society.

Science and technology are the engines of prosperity. Of course, one is free to ignore science and technology, but only at your peril. The world does not stand still because you are reading a religious text. If you do not master the latest in science and technology, then your competitors will.

La afición a la lectura ha llegado a ser tan peligrosa que el analfabetismo se hace deseable y honroso.

Socrates, one of the greatest philosophers of all time, took his whole life to get to the point where he said, "As for me, all I know is that I know nothing.

There is no worse blind man than the one who doesn't want to see. There is no worse deaf man than the one who doesn't want to hear. And there is no worse madman than the one who doesn't want to understand.

There was no way to solve a problem for people who didn't know they had one.

Cehalet, boÅŸ inançlar gibi sanayinin de anas?d?r. DüÅŸünce ve hayal gücü insan? hataya sürükleyebilir; ama ayak ya da eli hareket ettirme al??kanl??? bunlardan ne birini ne diÄŸerini gerektirir. Dolay?s?yla manifaktürler, en büyük geliÅŸme olanaklar?na, akla en az baÅŸvurulan yerlerde kavuÅŸur." Adam Ferguson, An Essay on the History of Civil Society

Happy people are ignoramuses and glory is nothing else but success, and to achieve it one only has to be cunning.