Quotes About Ignorance

And as things fell apart, nobody paid any attention.

Man, who thinks he knows everything. But what does man know...Man cares only for himself, in his fear and hate.

I don't think there's anything man wasn't meant to know. There are just some stupid things that people shouldn't do.

It always amused me to observe the pathetically desperate hunger expressed in popular culture for life forms on other planets, when under the feet of these seekers of aliens, and roundly ignored by them, were the most exotic, grotesque, and fabulous life forms imaginable

While pride and self-satisfaction might play well on TV, the Lord detests the proud face.3 It's the look of impenetrable ignorance. It doesn't ask questions. It has no reverse gear and won't admit to ever flip-flopping. When there is no soul-searching, is the soul still there?

The Principle of Optimism All evils are caused by insufficient knowledge.

I think what a life in science really teaches you is the vastness of our ignorance.

Sometimes you cannot program around stupid.

Decisions, by all accounts, including those of the participants, were made with little knowledge of, or concern for, the lands and peoples about which and whom the decisions were being made.

This story was made up by his neighbours not because they were fanciful or wanted to deceive, but like most tittle-tattle to fill a gap, as few like to confess ignorance, and if people are asked about such or such a man they must have something to say, or they suffer in everybody's opinion, are set down as dull or "out of the swim.

This is of course why violence is so often the preferred weapon of the stupid. One might even call it the trump card of the stupid, since (and this is surely one of the tragedies of human existence) it is the one form of stupidity to which it is most difficult to come up with an intelligent response.

most people who do a great deal of harm in the world are protected against the knowledge that they do so.

We are dealing, again, with powerful modern myths. Such myths don't merely inform what people say: to an even greater extent, they ensure certain things go unnoticed.

Sono saggio soprattutto riguardo alle cose che non so

Knowing unconsciously is best; presuming to know what you don't know is sick."34

The author describes megalomania as seen in Chairman Mao by saying that what he was familiar with, he was really familiar with. This zeal moved the megalomaniac with a complete lack of appreciation for what he DID NOT know.

he was so obsessed by the action in front of him that he had no awareness of the growing reaction to his performance.

Americans, wrote a historian of the period, were in general so ignorant of the realities on the ground that 'when the Palestinians rose up in resistance they were able to see the Zionists' increasingly aggressive, colonialist behaviour as a defence of democracy and other progressive Western ideals', while this 'Palestinian resistance to imperialist invasion became a form of unwarranted offense against civilization'.28

It was not the first time I had encountered on university campuses ignorance of Hayek and other conservative intellectuals, nor was it accidental. Such ignorance is a direct consequence of the tenured left's dominance of liberal arts institutions and its politicization of the curriculum and the faculty hiring process since the 1960s.

All that belongs to human understanding, in this deep ignorance and obscurity, is to be sceptical, or at least cautious, and not to admit of any hypothesis whatever, much less of any which is supported by no appearance of probability.

Weakness, fear, melancholy, together with ignorance, are, therefore, the true sources of Superstition.

this subterfuge was nothing but the disguise of ignorance

When I look abroad, I foresee on every side dispute, contradiction, anger, calummy, and detraction, When I turn my eye inward, I find nothing but doubt and ignorance (Hume, 1739, p.312)

When I look abroad, I foresee on every side, dispute, contradiction, anger, calumny and detraction. When I turn my eye inward, I find nothing but doubt and ignorance. All the world conspires to oppose and contradict me; tho' such is my weakness, that I feel all my opinions loosen and fall of themselves, when unsupported by the approbation of others. Every step I take is with hesitation, and every new reflection makes me dread an error and absurdity in my reasoning.