Quotes About Ignorance

But the system for all its cruelty and deceitfulness, turned out to be stupid. It had taught its future gravedigger how to wield a shovel.

Often I imagine that living is a game of rock-paper-scissors: fate beats hope, hope beats ignorance, and ignorance beats fate. Or, in a version that has preoccupied me: the fatalistic attracts the hopeful, the hopeful attracts the ignorant, and the ignorant, the fatalistic.

Not knowing is okay, he had once said, but pretending to know is not.

They'll live their lives in their ignorance, but not I. Why do I read books if not to live up to principles that are worth striving for?

If you ask me a question I don't know, I'm not going to answer it.

I have known a great many men who have left this Church for whom there is no chance whatever for exaltation, but if their blood had been spilled, it would have been better for them. The wickedness and ignorance of the nations forbid this principle's being in full force, but the time will come when the law of God will be in full force.

Simplemente me resultaba doloroso que él pudiera tener interés en tales libros, que revelara su ignorancia, que yo llegara a odiar esa perfección de la que él estaba inconscientemente dotado. Me dolía, en resumen, imaginarme a este pescador aborreciendo su Jonia natal.

Was I ignorant, then, when I was seventeen? I think not. I knew everything. A quarter-century's experience of life since then has added nothing to what I knew. The one difference is that at seventeen I had no 'realism'.

greed and anger is for those who never have enough. Fear is for those who are afraid to lose. Pride is for the fearful. Ignorance is for the weak. Love is for the strong at heart.

In the past, censorship worked by blocking the flow of information. In the twenty-first century, censorship works by flooding people with irrelevant information. [...] In ancient times having power meant having access to data. Today having power means knowing what to ignore.

The greatest scientific discovery was the discovery of ignorance. Once humans realised how little they knew about the world, they suddenly had a very good reason to seek new knowledge, which opened up the scientific road to progress.

The greatest crimes in modern history resulted not just from hatred and greed, but even more so from ignorance and indifference.

The greatest scientific discovery was the discovery of ignorance.

Poverty, sickness, wars, famines old age and death itself were not the inevitable fate of humankind. They were simply the fruits of our ignorance.

People rarely appreciate their ignorance, because they lock themselves inside an echo chamber of like-minded friends and self-confirming news feeds, where their beliefs are constantly reinforced and seldom challenged.3

They were too familiar to ignore, but too different to tolerate.

The greatest scientific discovery was the discovery of ignorance. Once humans realised how little they knew about the world, they suddenly had a very good reason to seek new knowledge, which opened up the scientific road to progress. With

One of the wonderful things about science is that when scientists don't know something, they can try out all kinds of theories and conjunctures, but in the end they can just admit their ignorance. The

The world is becoming ever more complex, and people fail to realize just how ignorant they are of what's going on.

As we come to make the most important decisions in the history of life, I personally would trust more in those who admit ignorance than in those who claim infallibility. If you want your religion, ideology or world view to lead the world, my first question to you is: 'What was the biggest mistake your religion, ideology or world view committed? What did it get wrong?' If you cannot come up with something serious, I for one would not trust you.

Modern-day science is a unique tradition of knowledge, inasmuch as it openly admits collective ignorance regarding the most important questions.

Many neo-liberal economists and political scientists argue that it is best to leave all the important decisions in the hands of the free market. They thereby give politicians the perfect excuse for inaction and ignorance, which are reinterpreted as profound wisdom. Politicians find it convenient to believe that the reason they don't understand the world is that they need not understand it.

The Scientific Revolution has not been a revolution of knowledge. It has been above all a revolution of ignorance. The great discovery that launched the Scientific Revolution was the discovery that humans do not know the answers to their most important questions. Premodern

In the twenty-first century censorship works by flooding people with irrelevant information. We just don't know what to pay attention to, and often spend our time investigating and debating side issues. In ancient times having power meant having access to data. Today having power means knowing what to ignore.