Ignorance Quotes
1,515 quotes
"Whatever the cost of our libraries, the price is cheap compared to that of an ignorant nation."
"Confidence is ignorance. If you're feeling cocky, it's because there's something you don't know."
"The greatest enemy of knowledge is not ignorance, it is the illusion of knowledge."
"You are not entitled to your opinion. You are entitled to your informed opinion. No one is entitled to be ignorant."
"Living is Easy with Eyes Closed."
"Without education, we are in a horrible and deadly danger of taking educated people seriously."
"There are people who are generic. They make generic responses and they expect generic answers. They live inside a box and they think people who don't fit into their box are weird. But I'll tell you what, generic people are the weird people. They are like genetically-manipulated plants growing inside a laboratory, like indistinguishable faces, like droids. Like ignorance."
"It takes a very long time to become young."
"I've been saying it so long to you, you just wouldn't listen. Every time you said 'Farm Boy do this' you thought I was answering 'As you wish' but that's only because you were hearing wrong. 'I love you' was what it was, but you never heard."
"Do you mean ter tell me,"he growled at the Dursleys, "that this boy—this boy!—knows nothin' abou'—about ANYTHING?"Harry thought this was going a bit far. He had been to school, after all, and his marks weren't bad."I know some things,"he said. "I can, you know, do math and stuff."
"People tend to be generous when sharing their nonsense, fear, and ignorance. And while they seem quite eager to feed you their negativity, please remember that sometimes the diet we need to be on is a spiritual and emotional one. Be cautious with what you feed your mind and soul. Fuel yourself with positivity and let that fuel propel you into positive action."
"Ignorance more frequently begets confidence than does knowledge: it is those who know little, not those who know much, who so positively assert that this or that problem will never be solved by science."
"Education is a system of imposed ignorance."
"To know that you do not know is the best.To think you know when you do not is a disease.Recognizing this disease as a disease is to be free of it."
"I can calculate the motion of heavenly bodies but not the madness of people."
"... there is no shame in not knowing. The problem arises when irrational thought and attendant behavior fill the vacuum left by ignorance."
"At first, they'll only dislike what you say, but the more correct you start sounding the more they'll dislike you."
"My cat is ignorant of the law. But then so am I. That means I am not his master, because we are both slaves."
"Occasionally he stumbled over the truth, but hastily picked himself up and hurried on as if nothing had happened."
"Travel brings wisdom only to the wise. It renders the ignorant more ignorant than ever."
"There are in fact two things, science and opinion; the former begets knowledge, the latter ignorance."
"Democracy is a pathetic belief in the collective wisdom of individual ignorance. No one in this world, so far as I know—and I have researched the records for years, and employed agents to help me—has ever lost money by underestimating the intelligence of the great masses of the plain people. Nor has anyone ever lost public office thereby."
"Everyone has a sense of humor. If you don't laugh at jokes, you probably laugh at opinions."
"The truth is like salt. Men want to taste a little, but too much makes everyone sick."
"A learned fool is more a fool than an ignorant fool."
"It is an infantile superstition of the human spirit that virginity would be thought a virtue and not the barrier that separates ignorance from knowledge."
"He must be very ignorant for he answers every question he is asked."
"Give me the storm and tempest of thought and action, rather than the dead calm of ignorance and faith! Banish me from Eden when you will; but first let me eat of the fruit of the tree of knowledge!"
"Anything was better than nothing. Half-full was better than empty. Ignorance was the lowest form of humiliation and suffering."
"When we set out on the path, we always have a fairly clear idea of what we hope to find. Women are generally seeking their Soul Mate, and men looking for Power. Neither party is really interested in learning. They simply want to reach the thing they have set as their goal."
"At first sign of crisis, the ignorant don’t panic because they don’t know what’s going on, and then later they panic precisely because they don’t know what’s going on."
"She was heartily ashamed of her ignorance - a misplaced shame. Where people wish to attach, they should always be ignorant. To come with a well−informed mind is to come with an inability of administering to the vanity of others, which a sensible person would always wish to avoid. A woman especially, if she have the misfortune of knowing anything, should conceal it as well as she can."
"Timendi causa est nescire - Ignorance is the cause of fear."
"Herein lies the tragedy of the age: not that men are poor, — all men know something of poverty; not that men are wicked, — who is good? not that men are ignorant, — what is Truth? Nay, but that men know so little of men."
"It has become almost a cliché to remark that nobody boasts of ignorance of literature, but it is socially acceptable to boast ignorance of science and proudly claim incompetence in mathematics."
"Such a simple concept, yet so true: that which we manifest is before us; we are the creators of our own destiny. Be it through intention or ignorance, our successes and our failures have been brought on by none other than ourselves."
"Only ignorance excuses stupidity"
"Humor can get in under the door while seriousness is still fumbling at the handle."
"Wisdom tends to grow in proportion to one's awareness of one's ignorance."
"He was one of the numerous and varied legion of dullards, of half-animated abortions, conceited, half-educated coxcombs, who attach themselves to the idea most in fashion only to vulgarize it and who caricature every cause they serve, however sincerely."
"People think that epilepsy is divine simply because they don't have any idea what causes epilepsy. But I believe that someday we will understand what causes epilepsy, and at that moment, we will cease to believe that it's divine. And so it is with everything in the universe"
"It’s very simple. As you grow, you learn more. If you stayed at twenty-two, you’d always be as ignorant as you were at twenty-two. Aging is not just decay, you know. It’s growth. It’s more than the negative that you’re going to die, it’s also the positive that you understand you’re going to die, and that you live a better life because of it."
"Ignorance is hardly unusual, Miss Davar. The longer I live, the more I come to realize that it is the natural state of the human mind. There are many who will strive to defend its sanctity and then expect you to be impressed with their efforts."
"I was hugely impressed... was the ultimate example of a man who knew what he didn't know, was perfectly willing to admit it, and didn't want to leave until he understood. That's heroic to me. I wish every grad student had that attitude."
"Any formal attack on ignorance is bound to fail because the masses are always ready to defend their most precious possession - their ignorance."
"Only a blind man can easily define what light is. When you do not know, you are bold. Ignorance is always bold; knowledge hesitates. And the more you know, the more you feel that the ground underneath is dissolving. The more you know, the more you feel how ignorant you are."
"It is always a much easier task to educate uneducated people than to re-educate the mis-educated."
"When you come to see you are not as wise today as you thought you were yesterday, you are wiser today."
"Science replaces private prejudice with public, verifiable evidence."
"There is no such uncertainty as a sure thing."
Showing 50 of 1,515 quotes