265 Ignorance Quotes

People who don't know anything tend to make up fake rules, the real rules being considerably more difficult to learn.

Learning will be cast into the mire and trodden down under the hoofs of a swinish multitude.

Whatever we cannot easily understand we call God; this saves much wear and tear on the brain tissues.

An empty head is not really empty; it is stuffed with rubbish. Hence the difficulty of forcing anything into an empty head.

The ignorant are a reservoir of daring. It almost seems that those who have yet to discover the known are particularly equipped for dealing with the unknown. The unlearned have often rushed in where the learned feared to tread, and it is the credulous who are tempted to attempt the impossible. They know not whither they are going, and give chance a chance.

As a rule, all heroism is due to a lack of reflection, and thus it is necessary to maintain a mass of imbeciles. If they once understand themselves the ruling men will be lost.

The terrible state of public education has paid huge dividends in ignorance. Huge. We now have a country that can be told blatant lies - easily checkable, blatant lies - and I'm not talking about the covert workings of the CIA. When we have a terrorist attack, on September 11, 2001 with 19 men - 15 of them are Saudis - and five minutes later the whole country thinks they're from Iraq - how can you have faith in the public? This is an easily checkable fact. The whole country is like the O.J. Simpson jurors.

All knowledge, the totality of all questions and all answers, is contained in the dog. If one could but realize this knowledge, if one could but bring it into the light of day, if we dogs would but own that we know infinitely more than we admit to ourselves!

The road to ignorance is paved with good editions. Only the illiterate can afford to buy good books now.

To be stupid, selfish, and have good health are three requirements for happiness, though if stupidity is lacking, all is lost.

The only saving grace of the present is that it's too damned stupid to question the past very closely.

Fools, they do not even know how much more is the half than the whole.

The great threat to the young and pure in heart is not what they read but what they don't read.

Our knowledge is a little island in a great ocean of nonknowledge.

The wrongs done to trees, wrongs of every sort, are done in the darkness of ignorance and unbelief, for when the light comes, the heart of the people is always right.

Dictatorships foster oppression, dictatorships foster servitude, dictatorships foster cruelty; more abominable is the fact that they foster idiocy.

Stupidity is an elemental force for which no earthquake is a match.

George W. Bush has gathered around him upper-crust C-students who know no history or geography.

Children's talent to endure stems from their ignorance of alternatives.

We allow our ignorance to prevail upon us and make us think we can survive alone, alone in patches, alone in groups, alone in races, even alone in genders.

Ignorance, the root and the stem of every evil.

There is no such place as Budapest. Perhaps you are thinking of Bucharest, and there is no such place as Bucharest, either.

Ignorance in this degree, concentrated in both the head and belly of a lumbering superpower, is now a problem for the entire world.

I, of whom I know nothing, I know my eyes are open, because of the tears that pour from them unceasingly.

Until you understand a writer's ignorance, presume yourself ignorant of his understanding.

A great deal of intelligence can be invested in ignorance when the need for illusion is deep.

I know nothing except the fact of my ignorance.

As for me, all I know is that I know nothing.

True knowledge exists in knowing that you know nothing.

Who's Britannica to tell me that the Panama Canal was built in 1914? If I want to say that it was built in 1941, that's my right as an American.

We believe that every being is divine, is God. Every soul is a sun covered over with clouds of ignorance; the difference between soul and soul is owing to the difference in density of these layers of clouds.

Who makes us ignorant? We ourselves. We put our hands over our eyes and weep that it is dark.

I defy you all To know twice as much as nothing at all It's still nothing at all.

There is only one good, which is knowledge, and one evil, which is ignorance.

On the contrary, it's because someone knows something about it that we can't talk about physics. It's the things that nobody knows about that we can discuss. We can talk about the weather; we can talk about social problems; we can talk about psychology; we can talk about international finance... so it's the subject that nobody knows anything about that we can all talk about!

Know that faith is one of the spiritual excellences that very few are aware of its light essence. Even the faithful are not aware of the radiance of their faith and the blessings it bears for them at the threshold of God as long as they are bound to this world and abide in the darkness of Nature.

A glittering jewel of colossal ignorance.

'The Politics of Ignorance' (2005)[3]

Most religions have merely canonized a few products of ancient ignorance and derangement and passed them down to us as though they were primordial truths.[2]

Anything worse than what I do, without knowing what, or why, I have never been able to conceive, and that doesn't surprise me, for I never tried. For had I been able to conceive something worse than what I had I would have known no peace until I got it, if I know anything about myself.

When civil fury first grew high, And men fell out, they knew not why; When hard words, jealousies, and fears, Set folks together by the ears, And made them fight, like mad or drunk, For Dame Religion, as for punk; Whose honesty they all durst swear for, Though not a man of them knew wherefore: When Gospel-Trumpeter, surrounded With long-ear'd rout, to battle sounded, And pulpit, drum ecclesiastick, Was beat with fist, instead of a stick; Then did Sir Knight abandon dwelling, And out he rode a colonelling.

A lady once asked him how he came to define Pastern the knee of a horse: instead of making an elaborate defence, as she expected, he at once answered, 'Ignorance, Madam, pure ignorance.'

There's something that remains barbarous in educated people, and lately I've more and more had the feeling that we are nonwondering primitives. And why is it that we no longer marvel at these technological miracles? They've become the external facts of every life. We've all been to the university, we've had introductory courses in everything, and therefore we have persuaded ourselves that if we had the time to apply ourselves to these scientific marvels, we would understand them. But of course that's an illusion. It couldn't happen. Even among people who have had careers in science. They know no more about how it all works than we do. So we are in the position of savage men who, however, have been educated into believing that they are capable of understanding everything. Not that we actually do understand, but that we have the capacity.

A Dialogue between two Infants in the womb concerning the state of this world, might handsomely illustrate our ignorance of the next, whereof methinks we yet discourse in Plato's Den, and are but Embryon Philosophers.

And how is not this the most reprehensible ignorance, to think that one knows what one does not know? But I, O Athenians! in this, perhaps, differ from most men; and if I should say that I am in any thing wiser than another, it would be in this, that not having a competent knowledge of the things in Hades, I also think that I have not such knowledge.

I am guilty of one thing - that I should have cleared out and not had anything to do with these criminals in the first place. Later it was too late. I was in up to my neck. But as for the atrocities, I had not a thing to do with them, did not know about them. And as for conspiring against peace, that is false, too. And that is my plain line of defense.

A Reichsbank president who was totally ignorant of what went in and out of the vaults of his bank.

What's your favorite planet? ... Mine's the sun! Its like the king of planets!

Rouze up, O Young Men of the New Age! set your foreheads against the ignorant Hirelings! For we have Hirelings in the Camp, the Court & the University, who would, if they could, for ever depress Mental & prolong Corporeal War.

I would be ignorant as the dawn That merely stood, rocking the glittering coach Above the cloudy shoulders of the horses; I would be- for no knowledge is worth a straw- Ignorant and wanton as the dawn.

We're worth a lot of dough. Whatever you see is antiques. This thing here. This is from - I don't remember exactly. I think it's the Renaissance or the Magna Carta or something. But that's where it's from.

'Ignorance has taken over, we gotta take the power back!'

Tarbash: 'What does 'iconoclast' mean?' Diane the Flower Lady: 'I don't know.' Tarbash: 'Then I speak English better than you. It means breaker of idols, icons. Iconoclast.' Diane the Flower Lady: 'It's not a word.'

I have made every effort to obtain exact information, comparing doctrines, replying to objections, continually constructing equations and reductions from arguments, and weighing thousands of syllogisms in the scales of the most rigorous logic. In this laborious work, I have collected many interesting facts which I shall share with my friends and the public as soon as I have leisure. But I must say that I recognized at once that we had never understood the meaning of these words, so common and yet so sacred: Justice, equity, liberty; that concerning each of these principles our ideas have been utterly obscure; and, in fact, that this ignorance was the sole cause, both of the poverty that devours us, and of all the calamities that have ever afflicted the human race.

It is necessary to have lived in this insulator which is called the national assembly, in order to perceive how the men who are the most completely ignorant of the state of the country are almost always the ones who represent it. I set myself to read everything that the distribution bureau sends the representatives: proposals, reports, brochures, even the Moniteur and the Bulletin of the laws. The greater part of my colleagues of the left and the extreme left were in the same perplexity of spirit, in the same ignorance of the daily facts. The national workshops were spoken of only with a kind of fright; for fear of the people is the defect of all those who belong to authority; the people, as concerns power, is the enemy.

For milkmaids and queens and gipsy-princesses Dream and kiss blindfold or starve upon guesses.

I believe all suffering is caused by ignorance. People inflict pain on others in the selfish pursuit of their happiness or satisfaction. Yet true happiness comes from a sense of inner peace and contentment, which in turn must be achieved through the cultivation of altruism, of love and compassion and elimination of ignorance, selfishness and greed. The problems we face today, violent conflicts, destruction of nature, poverty, hunger, and so on, are human-created problems which can be resolved through human effort, understanding and the development of a sense of brotherhood and sisterhood. We need to cultivate a universal responsibility for one another and the planet we share. Although I have found my own Buddhist religion helpful in generating love and compassion, even for those we consider our enemies, I am convinced that everyone can develop a good heart and a sense of universal responsibility with or without religion.

He's the one Who likes all the pretty songs And he likes to sing along And he likes to shoot his gun But he knows not what it means.

I don't know you You don't know anything

Our rulers: politicians, 'diplomats', bankers, priests of every description, economists, lawyers, etc. and the majority of teachers ... ignorant of modern science, scientific methods, structural linguistic and semantic issues of [today] and ... historical and anthropological background, without which a sane orientation is impossible.... as long as such ignorance of our rulers prevails, no solution of our human problems is possible.

In their ignorance, they were happy

It seems that the more I learn, the less I know. While the more ignorant remain absolutely certain of their convictions

You really are children. You have no idea how power works, or who has it, or what you can actually do with it

I know absolutely nothing about anything

Pardon my thug poetry, but suckers is born everyday/and fear of man grow on trees

You didn't listen, until the niggaz burned it down/And now Bush can't stop the hit

It is a mystery that is hidden from me by reason that the emergency requiring the fathoming of it hath not in my life-days occurred, and so, not having no need to know this thing, I abide barren of the knowledge.

There is something worse than ignorance, and that's knowing what ain't so.

All you need in this life is ignorance and confidence; then success is sure.

Errr I didn't see it.

Fools hate knowledge.

Kitty: Shikspur? Shikspur? Who wrote it? No, I never read Shikspur. Lady Bab: Then you have an immense pleasure to come.

The greatest enemy of knowledge is not ignorance, it is the illusion of knowledge.

Creio ate que o coracao dela ensinou-me alguma coisa, embora novico, ou por isso mesmo. Nesta materia desaprende-se com o uso e o ignorante e que e douto.

Ignorance is stubborn and prejudice is hard.

Not ignorance, but ignorance of ignorance, is the death of knowledge.

Only Socrates knew, after a lifetime of unceasing labor, that he was ignorant. Now every high-school student knows that. How did it become so easy?

We are like ignorant shepherds living on a site where great civilizations once flourished. The shepherds play with the fragments that pop up to the surface, having no notion of the beautiful structures of which they were once a part.

Education, n. That which discloses to the wise and disguises from the foolish their lack of understanding.

Learning, n. The kind of ignorance distinguishing the studious.

Religion, n. A daughter of Hope and Fear, explaining to Ignorance the nature of the Unknowable.

An ignorant doctor is the aide-de-camp of death.

Ignorance never settles a question.

The magic of first love is our ignorance that it can ever end.

To be conscious that you are ignorant of the facts is a great step to knowledge.

Mr. Kremlin himself was distinguished for ignorance, for he had only one idea, and that was wrong.

(I don't know what the Bearded Glass was for because I am not a magician.) (ch. 10)

The most perfect philosophy of the natural kind only staves off our ignorance a little longer: as perhaps the most perfect philosophy of the moral or metaphysical kind serves only to discover larger portions of it. Thus the observation of human blindness and weakness is the result of all philosophy, and meets us at every turn, in spite of our endeavours to elude or avoid it.

Ignorance is the mother of Devotion: A maxim that is proverbial, and confirmed by general experience. Look out for a people, entirely destitute of religion: If you find them at all, be assured, that they are but few degrees removed from brutes. What so pure as some of the morals, included in some theological system? What so corrupt as some of the practices, to which these systems give rise?

We play bad guys in Hollywood movies because of the Revolutionary War : oh yes, will you never forget - you big elephant you. And the French, who were on your side in the Revolutionary War (as you well know...), they play more esoteric characters. They play characters who turn up and go, 'My name is Pierre. I am 53. I have come to have sex with your family.' And the father of the house saying, 'Help yourself! Because of the debt of honour owed to General Lafayette.' [to audience] You know your own history, yeah? [pause] You don't know who he is, do you? What's this, the Spanish-American War, the French-Banana war? What?

As to killing rulers, it depends entirely on the position of the ruler. If it is the Russian tsar, I most certainly believe in dispatching him to where he belongs. If the ruler is as ineffectual as an American president, it is hardly worth the effort. There are, however, some potentates I would kill by any and all means at my disposal. They are Ignorance, Superstition, and Bigotry - the most sinister and tyrannical rulers on earth. (p. 207)

The most violent element in society is ignorance.