Quotes About Ignorance

It is better to be unborn than untaught: for ignorance is the root of misfortune.

Well, although I do not suppose that either of us knows anything really beautiful and good, I am better off than he is,— for he knows nothing, and thinks that he knows; I neither know nor think that I know.

So I appear to be wiser, at least than him, in just this one small respect: that when I don't know things, I don't think that I do either.

Knowing ourselves, we are beautiful; in self-ignorance, we are ugly.

In any event, if people want to believe in God, I have no problem with them. But if they want to tell me that God is a kind of truth or knowledge that I am ignorant of, I ask them how I can be more educated. They usually say, First you have to have faith. Then I realize their knowledge is personal and holds nothing for me, or for society. - Greg Graffin

There are people who wring their hands and call it an abyss, but do nothing to fill it; there are also those who work to widen it, as if the scientist and literary man belong to two different human subspecies, reciprocally incomprehensible, fated to ignore each other and not apt to engage in cross-fertilization.

Quien quema libros termina tarde o temprano por quemar hombres - Heinrich Heine

Il mestiere di chimico (fortificato, nel mio caso, dall'esperienza di Auschwitz) insegna a superare, anzi ad ignorare, certi ribrezzi, che non hanno nulla di necessario né di congenito: la materia è materia, né nobile né vile, infinitamente trasformabile, e non importa affatto quale sia la sua origine prossima.

You've learned the lesson,' Kellhus had said on one of those rare mornings when he shared her breakfast. 'What lesson might that be?' 'That the lessons never end.' He laughed, gingerly sipped his steaming tea. 'That ignorance is infinite.

Any fool can see the limits of seeing, but not even the wisest know the limits of knowing. Thus is ignorance rendered invisible, and are all Men made fools.

To be ignorant and to be deceived are two different things. To be ignorant is to be a slave of the world. To be deceived is to be the slave of another man. The question will always be: Why, when all men are ignorant, and therefore already slaves, does this latter slavery sting us so? —AJENCIS, THE EPISTEMOLOGIES   But

They so wanted it to be simple, believers. It is what is! they cried, sneering at the possibility of other eyes, other truths, overlooking their own outrageous presumption. It says what it says, spoken with a conviction that was itself insincerity. They ridiculed questions, for fear it would make their ignorance plain. Then they dared call themselves open.

more than anything, it was ignorance that delivered conviction beyond the pale of disputation. Ignorance of questions. Ignorance of alternatives. No tyranny was so complete as blindness.

Sheltered by his caste, Sarcellus had not, as the impoverished must, made fear the pivot of his passions. As a result he possessed an immovable self-assurance. He felt. He acted. He judged. The fear of being wrong that so characterized Achamian simply did not exist for Cutias Sarcellus. Where Achamian was ignorant of the answers, Sarcellus was ignorant of the questions. No certitude, she thought, could be greater.

It's the concert of knowledge and ignorance that underwrites our decisions.

Ignorance was ever the iron of certainty, for it was as blind to itself as sleep. It was the absence of questions that made answers absolute—not knowledge!

To be ignorant and to be deceived are two different things. To be ignorant is to be a slave of the world. To be deceived is to be the slave of another man. The question will always be: Why, when all men are ignorant, and therefore already slaves, does this latter slavery sting us so? —AJENCIS, THE EPISTEMOLOGIES

Ignorance is trust. —

There was nothing the ignorant prized more than the ignorance of others.

They so wanted it to be simple, believers. "It is what is!" they cried, sneering at the possibility of other eyes, other truths, overlooking their own outrageous presumption. "It says what it says," spoken with a conviction that was itself insincerity. They ridiculed questions, for fear it would make their ignorance plain. Then they dared call themselves "open.

You understand little because to learn you must admit you know nothing.

She led a submerged life, a life catacombed by poverty and ignorance

They so wanted it to be simple, believers. "It is what is!" they cried, sneering at the possibility of other eyes, other truths, overlooking their own outrageous presumption. "It says what it says," spoken with a conviction that was itself insincerity. They ridiculed questions, for fear it would make their ignorance plain. Then they dared call themselves "open." This was the iron habit of Men.

And do Men despise ignorance?' I asked. 'No,' he said, 'they prize it above all things—all things!—but only so long as it remains invisible.