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ignorance quotes

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“there is no darkness but ignorance;” William Shakespeare, Twelfth Night
“LEARNING, n. The kind of ignorance distinguishing the studious.” Ambrose Bierce, The Devil's Dictionary
“RELIGION, n. A daughter of Hope and Fear, explaining to Ignorance the nature of the Unknowable.” Ambrose Bierce, The Devil's Dictionary
“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
“Ignorance is the parent of fear” Herman Melville, Moby-Dick
“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
“for its vain splendour we go into the fire, thus blind ignorance does mislead us.” Leonardo da Vinci, The Notebooks of Leonardo Da Vinci
“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
“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 you hide your ignorance, no one will hit you and you'll never learn.” Ray Bradbury, Fahrenheit 451
“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
“Ignoring isn't the same as ignorance” Margaret Atwood, The Handmaid's Tale
“Falsity consists solely in the privation of knowledge which inadequate ideas involve” Baruch Spinoza, Ethics
“the most violent element in society is ignorance” Emma Goldman, Anarchism and Other Essays
“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
“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
“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
“A man's life would be intolerable if he knew what is to befall him.” Anatole France, The Gods Are Athirst
“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
“nothing is so firmly believed, as what we least know;” Michel de Montaigne, The Essays of Michel de Montaigne
“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
“Beware of the man who works hard to learn something, learns it, and finds himself no wiser than before . . . He is full of murderous resentment of people who are ignorant without having come by their ignorance the hard way.” Kurt Vonnegut, Cat's Cradle
“There are forces . . . infinitely more powerful than reason and science . . . Ignorance and folly” Anatole France, Thaïs
“A man's mind—what there is of it—has always the advantage of being masculine,—as the smallest birch-tree is of a higher kind than the most soaring palm,—and even his ignorance is of a sounder quality.” George Eliot, Middlemarch
“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
“it would be better to know nothing than to know so little, so imperfectly” Denis Diderot, Rameau's Nephew
“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
“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
“I wanted to know, not for the love of knowledge but as a defence against the world's contempt for the ignorant.” Charlie Chaplin, My Autobiography
“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
“People who know little are usually great talkers, while men who know much say little.” Jean-Jacques Rousseau, Emile, or On Education
“The free man, who lives among the ignorant, strives, as far as he can, to avoid receiving favours from them.” Baruch Spinoza, Ethics
“In the long run, a hierarchical society was only possible on a basis of poverty and ignorance.” George Orwell, 1984
“I'm quite illiterate, but I read a lot.” J. D. Salinger, The Catcher in the Rye
“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
“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
“I was a young man who attempted to make up for his ignorance with militancy.” Nelson Mandela, Long Walk to Freedom
“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
“Most people don't know what they're doing, and a lot of them are really good at it.” George Carlin, Napalm & Silly Putty
“Such is the influence of custom, that, where it is strongest, it not only covers our natural ignorance, but even conceals itself, and seems not to take place, merely because it is found in the highest degree.” David Hume, An Enquiry Concerning Human Understanding
“People are bloody ignorant apes.” Samuel Beckett, Waiting for Godot
“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
“If youth were not ignorant and timid, civilization would be impossible.” Honoré de Balzac, Father Goriot
“Man . . . how ignorant art thou in thy pride of wisdom!” Mary Shelley, Frankenstein
“And in these foure things, Opinion of Ghosts, Ignorance of second causes, Devotion towards what men fear, and Taking of things Casuall for Prognostiques, consisteth the Naturall seed of Religion” Thomas Hobbes, Leviathan
“Most men, even in this comparatively free country, through mere ignorance and mistake, are so occupied with the factitious cares and superfluously coarse labors of life that its finer fruits cannot be plucked by them.” Henry David Thoreau, Walden
“Where people wish to attach, they should always be ignorant.” Jane Austen, Northanger Abbey
“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
“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

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knowledge religion science learning youth morality understanding truth education wisdom fear evil stupidity extinction imposture philosophy God beauty reading good

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Thomas Hobbes (2)
Baruch Spinoza (2)
Anatole France (2)
Arthur Conan Doyle (1)
William Shakespeare (2)
Jane Austen (2)
George Orwell (1)
Albert Camus (1)
Henry David Thoreau (1)
Nelson Mandela (1)
Blaise Pascal (1)
George Eliot (1)
Kurt Vonnegut (1)
J. D. Salinger (1)
Herman Melville (1)
Margaret Atwood (1)
Ray Bradbury (1)
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Related sources

Leviathan (2)
Ethics (2)
1984 (1)
Fahrenheit 451 (1)
Frankenstein (1)
Middlemarch (1)
Moby-Dick (1)
The Education of Henry Adams (2)
Pensées (1)
The Devil's Dictionary (2)
Thaïs (1)
I Know Why the Caged Bird Sings (1)
Critique of Pure Reason (1)
The Plague (1)
The Essays of Michel de Montaigne (1)
A Study in Scarlet (1)
Waiting for Godot (1)
Long Walk to Freedom (1)
The Importance of Being Earnest (1)
Walden (1)