Ignorant Quotes - Page 26

• Idiots, the lame, the blind, the dumb, are men in whom the devils have established themselves: and all the physicians who heal these infirmities, as though they proceeded from natural causes, are ignorant blockheads.

  Martin Luther

  Religious, Men, Dumb

  Martin Luther (1862). “The Life of Luther Written by Himself”, p.321

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• Learned conversation is either the affectation of the ignorant or the profession of the mentally unemployed.

  Oscar Wilde

  Speech, Conversation, Unemployed

  Oscar Wilde (1969). “The Artist as Critic: Critical Writings of Oscar Wilde”, p.349, University of Chicago Press

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• An ignorant man is insignificant and contemptible; nobody cares for his company, and he can just be said to live, and that is all.

  Lord Chesterfield

  Men, Stupidity, Care

  Lord Philip Dormer Stanhope Chesterfield, Philip Dormer Stanhope Earl of Chesterfield (1855). “The Works of Lord Chesterfield: Including His Letters to His Son, Etc : to which is Prefixed, an Original Life of the Author”, p.74

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• Your god is dead and only the ignorant weep. And if you claim there is a hell, then we shall meet there!

  Friedrich Nietzsche

  Religious, Hell, Claims

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• Therefore I say: know the enemy and know yourself; in a hundred battles you will never be in peril. When you are ignorant of the enemy but know yourself, your chances of winning or losing are equal. If ignorant both of your enemy and of yourself, you are certain in every battle to be in peril.

  Sun Tzu

  Military, Winning, Enemy

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• When I was fourteen, my father was so ignorant I could hardly stand to have him around. When I got to be twenty-one, I was astonished at how much he had learned in seven years. See what happens when you "know it all", at any stage of life? Farther down the track you may see clearly how certain personal opinions, held onto too tightly, could be fogging up the view, and providing incorrect insight. Prosperity is the best protector of principle.

  Mark Twain

  Inspirational Life, Father, Personal Opinions

  Attributed in Reader's Digest, Sept. 1937. The attribution to Twain is obviously spurious because Twain's father died when the future writer was eleven years old.

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• Life is such a mystery, no one can understand it, and one who claims that he understands it is simply ignorant. He is not aware of what he is saying, of what nonsense he is talking. If you are wise, this will be the first realization: life cannot be understood. Understanding is impossible. Only this much can be understood - that understanding is impossible.

  Rajneesh

  Life, Wise, Talking

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• The valuable attributes of research men are conscious ignorance and active curiosity.

  Willis R. Whitney

  Ignorance, Science, Men

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• Suppose that we are wise enough to learn and know - and yet not wise enough to control our learning and knowledge, so that we use it to destroy ourselves? Even if that is so, knowledge remains better than ignorance. It is better to know - even if the knowledge endures only for the moment that comes before destruction - than to gain eternal life at the price of a dull and swinish lack of comprehension of a universe that swirls unseen before us in all its wonder. That was the choice of Achilles, and it is mine, too.

  Isaac Asimov

  Life, Wise, Wisdom

  "The New Hugo Winners". Book by Isaac Asimov et al., p. 215, 1989.

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• It was a reaction from the old idea of "protoplasm", a name which was a mere repository of ignorance.

  John B. S. Haldane

  Ignorance, Science, Names

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• This therefore is Mathematics: She reminds you of the invisible forms of the soul; She gives life to her own discoveries; She awakens the mind and purifies the intellect; She brings light to our intrinsic ideas; She abolishes oblivion and ignorance which are ours by birth.

  Proclus

  Life, Ignorance, Science

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• Life is a mystery; that means it cannot be solved. And when all efforts to solve it prove futile, the mystery dawns upon you. Then the doors are open; then you are invited. As a knower, nobody enters the divine; as a child, ignorant, not knowing at all- the mystery embraces you. With a knowing mind you are clever, not innocent. Innocence is the door.

  Rajneesh

  Life, Children, Clever

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• Sannyas is celebration of life, and sin is natural: natural in the sense that you are unconscious - what else can you do? In unconsciousness, sin is bound to happen. Sin simply means that you don't know what you are doing, you are unaware, so whatsoever you do goes wrong. But to recognize that "I am a sinner" is the beginning of a great pilgrimage. To recognize that "I am a sinner" is the beginning of real virtue. To see that "I am ignorant" is the first glimpse of wisdom.

  Rajneesh

  Real, Mean, Doing You

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• Speak your truth quietly & clearly; and listen to others, even the dull & ignorant; they too have their story.

  Max Ehrmann

  Honesty, Listening, Stories

  Max Ehrmann, “Desiderata”

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• It is said that every people has the Government it deserves. It is more to the point that every Government has the electorate it deserves; for the orator of the front bench can edify or debauch an ignorant electorate at will.

  George Bernard Shaw

  Honesty, Government, People

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• We are ignorant of the Beyond because this ignorance is the condition of our own life. Just as ice cannot know fire except by melting and vanishing.

  Jules Renard

  Death, Ignorance, Fire

  Jules Renard, Louise Bogan, Elizabeth Roget (2008). “The Journal of Jules Renard”, p.41, Tin House Books

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• Tho' there be no such Thing as Chance in the World; our Ignorance of the real Ccause of any Event has the same Influence on the Understanding, and begets a like Species of Belief or Opinion.

  David Hume

  Real, Ignorance, Science

  An Enquiry Concerning Human Understanding Section VI (p. 37)

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• The body can't distinguish between cleansing and punishing for the body is ignorant, and mute besides.

  Joyce Carol Oates

  Body, Cleansing, Self Injury

  Joyce Carol Oates (2000). “Snapshots: 20th century mother-daughter fiction”, David R. Godine Publisher

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• All political theories assume, of course, that most individuals are very ignorant. Those who plead for liberty differ from the rest in that they include among the ignorant themselves as well as the wisest.

  Friedrich August von Hayek

  Wisdom, Political, Liberty

  "The Constitution of Liberty". Book by Friedrich Hayek. Part I: "The Value of Freedom". Chapter 2: "The Creative Power of a Free Civilization", 1960.

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• Human consciousness arose but a minute before midnight on the geological clock. Yet we mayflies try to bend an ancient world to our purposes, ignorant perhaps of the messages buried in its long history. Let us hope that we are still in the early morning of our April day.

  Stephen Jay Gould

  Morning, Long, Trying

  Stephen Jay Gould (2010). “The Panda's Thumb: More Reflections in Natural History”, p.305, W. W. Norton & Company

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• It is admirable to consider how many millions of people come into, and go out of the world, ignorant of themselves and of the world they have lived in.

  William Penn

  People, Earth, World

  Benjamin Franklin, William Penn (2012). “Franklin's Way to Wealth and Penn's Maxims”, p.19, Courier Corporation

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• Man, no doubt, owes many other moral duties to his fellow men; such as to feed the hungry, clothe the naked, shelter the homeless, care for the sick, protect the defenseless, assist the weak, and enlighten the ignorant. But these are simply moral duties, of which each man must be his own judge, in each particular case, as to whether, and how, and how far, he can, or will perform them.

  Lysander Spooner

  Men, Sick, Judging

  Lysander Spooner (1882). “Natural Law, Or, The Science of Justice: A Treatise on Natural Law, Natural Justice, Natural Rights, Natural Liberty, and Natural Society : Showing that All Legislation Whatsoever is an Absurdity, a Usurpation, and a Crime”

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• Government ought to be as much open to improvement as anything which appertains to man, instead of which it has been monopolized from age to age, by the most ignorant and vicious of the human race. Need we any other proof of their wretched management, than the excess of debts and taxes with which every nation groans, and the quarrels into which they have precipitated the world?"

  Thomas Paine

  Men, Race, Age

  Thomas Paine (1995). “Thomas Paine: Collected Writings: Common Sense / The American Crisis / Rights of: (Library of America #76)”, p.595, Library of America

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• Our ignorance is God; what we know is science. When we abandon the doctrine that some infinite being created matter and force, and enacted a code of laws for their government ... the real priest will then be, not the mouth-piece of some pretended deity, but the interpreter of nature.

  Robert Green Ingersoll

  God, Real, Ignorance

  Robert Green Ingersoll (1873). “An Oration on the Gods”, p.31

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• All science is full of statements where you put your best face on your ignorance, where you say: ... we know awfully little about this, but more or less irrespective of the stuff we don't know about, we can make certain useful deductions.

  Hermann Bondi

  Ignorance, Knowledge, Science

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