Ignorant Quotes - Page 27

• It is not so bad being ignorant if you are totally ignorant; the hard thing is knowing in some detail the reality of ignorance.

  Lewis Thomas

  Ignorance, Knowledge, Science

  Lewis Thomas (1990). “A Long Line of Cells Collected Essays”

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• Knowledge is not happiness, and science
  But an exchange of ignorance for that
  Which is another kind of ignorance.

  Lord Byron

  Ignorance, Knowledge, Science

  Lord Byron (2013). “Delphi Complete Works of Lord Byron (Illustrated)”, p.1150, Delphi Classics

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• Of power does Man possess no particle: Of knowledge-just so much as show that still It ends in ignorance on every side.

  Robert Browning

  Ignorance, Knowledge, Science

  Robert Browning (2008). “The Agamemnon of Aeschylus, La Saisiaz, Etc.”, p.334, Wildside Press LLC

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• Science begets knowledge; opinion, ignorance.

  Hippocrates

  Ignorance, Knowledge, Science

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• Statistics, one may hope, will improve gradually, and become good for something. Meanwhile, it is to be feared the crabbed satirist was partly right, as things go: "A judicious man," says he, "looks at Statistics, not to get knowledge, but to save himself from having ignorance foisted on him."

  Thomas Carlyle

  Ignorance, Knowledge, Science

  English and Other Critical Essays Chartism, Chapter II

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• To inquisitive minds like yours and mine the reflection that the quantity of human knowledge bears no proportion to the quantity of human ignorance must be in one view rather pleasing, viz., that though we are to live forever we may be continually amused and delighted with learning something new.

  Benjamin Franklin

  Learning, Ignorance, Knowledge

  Benjamin Franklin, Albert H. Smyth (1905). “Writings, Collected and Ed. with a Life and Introd”

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• Whatever Nature has in store for mankind, unpleasant as it may be, men must accept, for ignorance is never better than knowledge.

  Enrico Fermi

  Ignorance, Knowledge, Science

  Quoted in Laura Fermi Atoms in the Family (1954).

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• Where there is no knowledge ignorance calls itself science.

  George Bernard Shaw

  Ignorance, Knowledge, Science

  George Bernard Shaw (2015). “George Bernard Shaw: Collected Articles, Lectures, Essays and Letters: Thoughts and Studies from the Renowned Dramaturge and Author of Mrs. Warren’s Profession, Pygmalion, Arms and The Man, Saint Joan, Caesar and Cleopatra, Androcles And The Lion”, p.317, e-artnow

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• Wonder [admiratio astonishment, marvel] is a kind of desire for knowledge. The situation arises when one sees an effect and does not know its cause, or when the cause of the particular effect is one that exceeds his power of understanding. Hence, wonder is a cause of pleasure insofar as there is annexed the hope of attaining understanding of that which one wants to know. ... For desire is especially aroused by the awareness of ignorance, and consequently a man takes the greatest pleasure in those things which he discovers for himself or learns from the ground up.

  Thomas Aquinas

  Ignorance, Knowledge, Science

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• A few drops of science will often disinfect an entire barrel full of ignorance and prejudice.

  Hendrik Willem van Loon

  Ignorance, Science, Prejudice

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• All Pretences of foretelling by Astrology, are Deceits; for this manifest Reason, because the Wise and Learned, who can only judge whether there be any Truth in this Science, do all unanimously agree to laugh at and despise it; and none but the poor ignorant Vulgar give it any Credit.

  Jonathan Swift

  Wise, Science, Astrology

  Jonathan Swift, John Hawkesworth (1766). “The Works of Dr. Jonathan Swift: Accurately Revised in Twelve Volumes, Adorned with Copper-plates, with Some Account of the Author's Life, and Notes Historical and Explanatory”, p.194

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• The greatest achievements in the science of this [twentieth] century are themselves the sources of more puzzlement than human beings have ever experienced. Indeed, it is likely that the twentieth century will be looked back at as the time when science provided the first close glimpse of the profundity of human ignorance. We have not reached solutions; we have only begun to discover how to ask questions.

  Lewis Thomas

  Ignorance, Science, Achievement

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• Ultimately there can be no disagreement between history, science, philosophy, and theology. Where there is disagreement, there is either ignorance or error.

  Mortimer Adler

  Philosophy, Ignorance, Science

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• It is not the lie that passeth through the mind, but the lie that sinketh in and settleth in it, that doth the hurt.

  Francis Bacon

  Hurt, Lying, Ignorance

  'Essays' (1625) 'Of Truth'

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• There are four great sciences, without which the other sciences cannot be known nor a knowledge of things secured ... Of these sciences the gate and key is mathematics ... He who is ignorant of this [mathematics] cannot know the other sciences nor the affairs of this world.

  Roger Bacon

  Keys, World, Four

  Roger Bacon (1928). “The Opus majus of Roger Bacon: a translation of Robert Belle Burke”

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• Pride is less ashamed of being ignorant, than of being instructed, and she looks too high to find that, which very often lies beneath her.

  Charles Caleb Colton

  Lying, Pride, Looks

  Charles Caleb Colton (1824). “Lacon, Or, Many Things in a Few Words: Addressed to Those who Think”, p.113

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• It is all the more necessary under a system of free government that the people should be enlightened, that they should be correctly informed, than it is under an absolute government that they should be ignorant. Under a republic the institutions of learning, while bound by the constitution and laws, are in no way subservient to the government.

  Calvin Coolidge

  Education, Government, Law

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• Creationism: God's gift to the ignorant.

  Richard Dawkins

  Religion, Atheism, Creationism

  "Creationism: God’s gift to the ignorant" by Richard Dawkins, The Times (London), May 21, 2005.

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• Whenever a man believes that he has the exact truth from God, there is in that man no spirit of compromise. He has not the modesty born of the imperfections of human nature; he has the arrogance of theological certainty and the tyranny born of ignorant assurance. Believing himself to be the slave of God, he imitates his master, and of all tyrants the worst is a slave in power.

  Robert Green Ingersoll

  Believe, Men, Tyrants

  Robert Green Ingersoll (1907). “The works of Robert G. Ingersoll”, p.444, Library of Alexandria

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• They are deceived who flatter themselves that the ignorant and debased slave has no conception of the magnitude of his wrongs. They are deceived who imagine that he arises from his knees with back lacerated and bleeding, cherishing only a spirit of meekness and forgiveness. A day may come - it will, if his prayer is heard. A terrible day of vengeance when the master in his turn will cry in vain for mercy.

  Solomon Northup

  Fear, Prayer, Atheism

  Solomon Northup (2016). “Twelve Years a Slave”, p.135, Skyhorse Publishing, Inc.

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• In America we eat, collectively, with a glum urge for food to fill us. We are ignorant of flavour. We are as a nation taste-blind.

  M. F. K. Fisher

  Food, America, Cooking

  1976 The Art of Eating.

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• It was the Russians that introduced the Chinese to Marxism. Before the October Revolution, the Chinese were not only ignorant of Lenin and Stalin but did not even know of Marx or Engels. The salvos of the October Revolution awoke us to Marxism-Leninism.

  Mao Zedong

  Communication, October Revolution, Chinese

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• If the people were a little more ignorant, astrology would flourish - if a little more enlightened, religion would perish.

  Robert Green Ingersoll

  Astrology, People, Littles

  Robert Green Ingersoll (1907). “The works of Robert G. Ingersoll”, p.308, Library of Alexandria

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• The scientific approach to the phenomenon of human nature enables us to be ignorant without bieng frightened, and without, therefore, having to invent all sorts of wierd theories to explain away our gaps in knowledge.

  Donald Woods Winnicott

  Gaps, Human Nature, Theory

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• A buddha laughs too, but his laughter has the quality of a smile. His laughter has the feminine quality of grace. When an ignorant person laughs, his laughter is very aggressive, egoistic. The ignorant person always laughs at others. The contented person, the person who knows life a little, laughs at himself - at the whole play of life itself. It is not addressed to anybody in particular. He just laughs at the absurdity of it all... the impossibility of it all.

  Rajneesh

  Laughter, Play, Laughing

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