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ignorance quotes

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“there is no darkness but ignorance;” William Shakespeare, Twelfth Night
“She said that I must always be intolerant of ignorance but understanding of a lack of knowledge.” Maya Angelou, I Know Why the Caged Bird Sings
“nothing is so firmly believed, as what we least know;” Michel de Montaigne, The Essays of Michel de Montaigne
“Avoidable human misery is more often caused not so much by stupidity as by ignorance, particularly our ignorance about ourselves.” Carl Sagan, The Demon-Haunted World
“The evil that is in the world always comes of ignorance, and good intentions may do as much harm as malevolence, if they lack understanding. On the whole, men are more good than bad; that, however, isn't the real point.” Albert Camus, The Plague
“People who know little are usually great talkers, while men who know much say little.” Jean-Jacques Rousseau, Emile, or On Education
“In the long run, a hierarchical society was only possible on a basis of poverty and ignorance.” George Orwell, 1984
“Ignorance is preferable to error; and he is less remote from the truth who believes nothing, than he who believes what is wrong.” Thomas Jefferson, Notes on the State of Virginia
“Nothing in education is so astonishing as the amount of ignorance it accumulates in the form of inert facts.” Henry Adams, The Education of Henry Adams
“If youth were not ignorant and timid, civilization would be impossible.” Honoré de Balzac, Father Goriot
“right is right, and wrong is wrong, and a body ain't got no business doing wrong when he ain't ignorant and knows better.” Mark Twain, Adventures of Huckleberry Finn
“I was a young man who attempted to make up for his ignorance with militancy.” Nelson Mandela, Long Walk to Freedom
“RELIGION, n. A daughter of Hope and Fear, explaining to Ignorance the nature of the Unknowable.” Ambrose Bierce, The Devil's Dictionary
“His ignorance was as remarkable as his knowledge. Of contemporary literature, philosophy and politics he appeared to know next to nothing.” Arthur Conan Doyle, A Study in Scarlet
“Ignorance, when it is voluntary, is criminal; and he may properly be charged with evil who refused to learn how he might prevent it.” Samuel Johnson, The History of Rasselas, Prince of Abissinia
“And, in fine, of false sciences I thought I knew the worth sufficiently to escape being deceived by the professions of an alchemist, the predictions of an astrologer, the impostures of a magician, or by the artifices and boasting of any of those...” René Descartes, Discourse on the Method
“One can't judge till one's forty; before that we're too eager, too hard, too cruel, and in addition much too ignorant.” Henry James, The Portrait of a Lady
“I'm quite illiterate, but I read a lot.” J. D. Salinger, The Catcher in the Rye
“People are bloody ignorant apes.” Samuel Beckett, Waiting for Godot
“LEARNING, n. The kind of ignorance distinguishing the studious.” Ambrose Bierce, The Devil's Dictionary
“Where people wish to attach, they should always be ignorant.” Jane Austen, Northanger Abbey
“The less a tourist knows, the fewer mistakes he need make, for he will not expect himself to explain ignorance.” Henry Adams, The Education of Henry Adams
“for its vain splendour we go into the fire, thus blind ignorance does mislead us.” Leonardo da Vinci, The Notebooks of Leonardo Da Vinci
“If a faithful account was rendered of Man's ideas upon Divinity, he would be obliged to acknowledge, that for the most part the word 'gods' has been used to express the concealed, remote, unknown causes of the effects he witnessed” Paul Thiry d'Holbach
“And seeing ignorance is the curse of God, Knowledge the wing wherewith we fly to heaven, Unless you be possess'd with devilish spirits, You cannot but forbear to murder me:” William Shakespeare, Henry VI, Part 2
“There is a time in every man's education when he arrives at the conviction that envy is ignorance; that imitation is suicide; that he must take himself for better, for worse, as his portion;” Ralph Waldo Emerson, Self-Reliance
“If you hide your ignorance, no one will hit you and you'll never learn.” Ray Bradbury, Fahrenheit 451
“the most violent element in society is ignorance” Emma Goldman, Anarchism and Other Essays
“Most people don't know what they're doing, and a lot of them are really good at it.” George Carlin, Napalm & Silly Putty
“I do not approve of anything that tampers with natural ignorance. Ignorance is like a delicate exotic fruit; touch it and the bloom is gone.” Oscar Wilde, The Importance of Being Earnest
“And Credulity, because men love to be hearkened unto in company, disposeth them to lying: so that Ignorance it selfe without Malice, is able to make a man bothe to believe lyes, and tell them; and sometimes also to invent them.” Thomas Hobbes, Leviathan
“Man . . . how ignorant art thou in thy pride of wisdom!” Mary Shelley, Frankenstein
“But, above all, it will confer an inestimable benefit on morality and religion, by showing that all the objections urged against them may be silenced for ever by the Socratic method, that is to say, by proving the ignorance of the objector.” Immanuel Kant, Critique of Pure Reason
“Nevertheless, so profound is our ignorance, and so high our presumption, that we marvel when we hear of the extinction of an organic being; and as we do not see the cause, we invoke cataclysms to desolate the world, or invent laws on the duration...” Charles Darwin, On The Origin of Species
“Ignoring isn't the same as ignorance” Margaret Atwood, The Handmaid's Tale
“Facts or opinions which are to pass through the hands of so many, to be misconceived by folly in one, and ignorance in another, can hardly have much truth left.” Jane Austen, Persuasion
“When I see the blindness and the wretchedness of man, when I regard the whole silent universe, and man without light, left to himself, and, as it were, lost in this corner of the universe, without knowing who has put him there, what he has come...” Blaise Pascal, Pensées

Related topics

morality stupidity truth evil lie knowledge education religion understanding wisdom fear philosophy blindness learning youth ape belief talking science God

Related authors

William Shakespeare (2)
Thomas Jefferson (1)
Carl Sagan (1)
Ambrose Bierce (2)
George Orwell (1)
Albert Camus (1)
Arthur Conan Doyle (1)
J. D. Salinger (1)
Henry Adams (2)
Jane Austen (2)
Blaise Pascal (1)
Ray Bradbury (1)
Jean-Jacques Rousseau (1)
Maya Angelou (1)
Michel de Montaigne (1)
Mark Twain (1)
Oscar Wilde (1)
Nelson Mandela (1)
Samuel Beckett (1)
Leonardo da Vinci (1)

Related sources

1984 (1)
Fahrenheit 451 (1)
The Education of Henry Adams (2)
Pensées (1)
The Devil's Dictionary (2)
The Essays of Michel de Montaigne (1)
Critique of Pure Reason (1)
The Plague (1)
The Demon-Haunted World (1)
Twelfth Night (1)
Anarchism and Other Essays (1)
Long Walk to Freedom (1)
On The Origin of Species (1)
Waiting for Godot (1)
The Notebooks of Leonardo Da Vinci (1)
The Importance of Being Earnest (1)
The Catcher in the Rye (1)
I Know Why the Caged Bird Sings (1)
Frankenstein (1)
Father Goriot (1)