Ignorant Quotes - Page 4

• The best lessons a man ever learns are from his mistakes. It is not for want of schoolmasters that we are still ignorant.

  Henry Ward Beecher

  Mistake, Men, Lessons

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• No people are so easy to govern as the intelligent, and none are so hard to govern as the ignorant.

  Henry Ward Beecher

  Intelligent, People, Easy

  Henry Ward Beecher, William Drysdale (1887). “Proverbs from Plymouth Pulpit”

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• People who know little are usually great talkers, while men who know much say little. It is plain that an ignorant person thinks everything he does know important, and he tells it to everybody. But a well-educated man is not so ready to display his learning; he would have too much to say, and he sees that there is much more to be said, so he holds his peace.

  Jean-Jacques Rousseau

  Knowledge, Men, Thinking

  Jean Jacques Rousseau (2015). “Emile”, p.577, eKitap Projesi

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• Families, when a child is born Want it to be intelligent. I, through intelligence, Having wrecked my whole life, Only hope the baby will prove Ignorant and stupid. Then he will crown a tranquil life By becoming a Cabinet Minister.

  Stephen King

  Baby, Children, Stupid

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• Though the ancients were ignorant of the principles of Christianity there were in them the germs of its spirit.

  Herman Melville

  Principles, Germs, Spirit

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• If I had to describe my remarks this evening frankly as if I were in police court and on oath, so to speak I should have to call it a ramble over several subjects, portions of which may seem to you to be impudent, and portions of which will be ignorant, and portions of which may contrive to be both at once.

  Robertson Davies

  Should Have, Police, Evening

  Robertson Davies (2008). “Selected Works on the Pleasures of Reading”, Penguin Group Canada

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• Common-sense is part of the home-made ideology of those who have been deprived of fundamental learning, of those who have been kept ignorant.

  John Berger

  Home, Common Sense, Fundamentals

  John Berger (2015). “A Fortunate Man: The Story of a Country Doctor”, p.66, Canongate Books

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• Do not mathematics and all sciences seem full of contradictions and impossibilities to the ignorant, which are all resolved and cleared to those that understand them?

  Richard Baxter

  Contradiction, Mathematics, Seems

  Richard Baxter (1830). “The Practical Works of Richard Baxter: with a Life of the Author and a Critical Examination of His Writings by William Orme”, p.206

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• If the ability to tell right from wrong should turn out to have anything to do with the ability to think, then we must be able to "demand" its exercise from every sane person, no matter how erudite or ignorant, intelligent or stupid, he may happen to be. Kant in this respect almost alone among the philosophers was much bothered by the common opinion that philosophy is only for the few, precisely because of its moral implications.

  Hannah Arendt

  Stupid, Philosophy, Exercise

  "The Life of the Mind". Book by Hannah Arendt, p. 13, 1978.

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• No more harmful nonsense exists than [the] common supposition that deepest insight into great questions about the meaning of life or the structure of reality emerges most readily when a free, undisciplined, and uncluttered (read, rather, ignorant and uneducated) mind soars above mere earthly knowledge and concern.

  Stephen Jay Gould

  Reality, Mind, Meaning Of Life

  "I Have Landed". Book by Stephen Jay Gould, "No Science Without Fancy, No Art Without Facts", p. 48, May 14, 2002.

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• There is sometimes a greater judgement shewn in deviating from the rules of art, than in adhering to them; and?there ismore beauty inthe works of a great genius who is ignorant of all the rules of art, than in the works of a little genius, who not only knows but scrupulously observes them.

  Joseph Addison

  Art, Judgement, Genius

  'The Spectator' no. 592, 10 September 1714.

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• When grown-up persons indulge in practical jokes, the fact gauges them. They have lived narrow, obscure, and ignorant lives, and at full manhood they still retain and cherish a job lot of left-over standards and ideals that would have been discarded with their boyhood if they had then moved out into the world and a broader life.

  Mark Twain

  Jobs, Indulge In, Gauges

  Mark Twain (2013). “Autobiography of Mark Twain”, p.4, Univ of California Press

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• He seemeth to be most ignorant that trusteth most to his wit.

  Plato

  Wit

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• We all have the dark, ignorant shadow inside us. I have worked endlessly to reveal it and heal it in me, but of course there's some primitive weird stuff in me. The Tea Party is about exhorting white supremacy, though, so I've had a tiny bit of trouble experiencing sympathy.

  Anne Lamott

  Party, Dark, White

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• There is a constant rush to judgment in Foucault. He is filled with specious generalizations, false categories, distortions, fudging, pretenses to knowledge in areas where he was ignorant. He had no ability whatsoever to distinguish among historical sources, where he makes terrible blunders.

  Camille Paglia

  Historical, Judgment, Source

  "Junk Bonds and Corporate Raiders: Academe in the Hour of the Wolf". Camille Paglia, "Arion", Third Series, Volume 1, No. 2, Spring 1991.

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• The number one problem in academia today is not ignorant students but ignorant professors, who have substituted narrow "expertise" and "theoretical sophistication" (a preposterous term) for breadth and depth of learning in the world history of art and thought... Art is a vast, ancient interconnected web-work, a fabricated tradition. Overconcentration on any one point is a distortion. This is one of the primary reasons for the dullness and ineptitude of so much twentieth-criticism, as compared to nineteenth-century belles-lettres.

  Camille Paglia

  Art, Numbers, Criticism

  "Junk Bonds and Corporate Raiders: Academe in the Hour of the Wolf". Camille Paglia, "Arion", Third Series, Volume 1, No. 2, Spring 1991.

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• I can never quite decide whether the anti-Columbus movement is merely risible or faintly sinister. It is sinister, though, because it is an ignorant celebration of stasis and backwardness, with an unpleasant tinge of self-hatred.

  Christopher Hitchens

  Self, Hatred, Movement

  "Minority Report". The Nation, October 19, 1992.

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• The error of the ignorant goes so far as to say that God's power is insufficient, because he has given to this Universe the properties which they imagine cause these great evils, and which do not help all evil-disposed persons to obtain the evil which they seek, and to bring their evil souls to the aim of their desires, though these, as we have shown, are really without limit.

  Maimonides

  Errors, Evil, Soul

  Moses Maimonides (1919). “The Guide for the Perplexed”

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• Even when a person suffers pain in consequence of a thorn having entered into his hand, although it is at once drawn out, it is a punishment that has been inflicted on him, and the least pleasure he enjoys is a reward; all this is meted out by strict justice; as is said in the Scripture, "all His ways are judgement" (Deut. xxxii. 4); we are only ignorant of the working of that judgement.

  Maimonides

  Pain, Hands, Punishment

  Moses Maimonides (2016). “Guide for the perplexed”, p.1088, Moses Maimonides

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• Know that the difficulties which lead to confusion in the question what is the purpose of the Universe or of any of its parts, arise from two causes: first, man has an erroneous idea of himself, and believes that the whole world exists only for his sake; secondly, he is ignorant both about the nature of the sublunary world, and about the Creator's intention to give existence to all beings whose existence is possible, because existence is undoubtedly good.

  Maimonides

  Believe, Men, Ideas

  Moses Maimonides (1961). “The Guide for the Perplexed”, p.309, Courier Corporation

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• Why, when no honest man will deny in private that every ultimate problem is wrapped in the profoundest mystery, do honest men proclaim in pulpits that unhesitating certainty is the duty of the most foolish and ignorant? Is it not a spectacle to make the angels laugh?

  Leslie Stephen

  Angel, Men, Laughing

  Sir Leslie Stephen (1903). “An Agnostic's Apology, and Other Essays”

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• Even the ignorant may appear very worthy,
  If they keep silent before the learned.

  Thiruvalluvar

  May, Silent, Worthy

  "Tirukkural". Book by Thiruvalluvar, 1840.

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• The ignorant are like useless, brackish soil;
  They exist and that is all.

  Thiruvalluvar

  Useless, Soil

  "Tirukkural". Book by Thiruvalluvar, 1840.

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• Without a huge shock, the sleepy-head, ignorant Japanese will never wake up.

  Hiroo Onoda

  Wake Up, Sleepy, Shock

  "Words to Live By: Hiroo Onoda". Judit Kawaguchi, The Japan Times, January 16, 2007.

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• With childhood comes a brief grace period of ignorant bliss -- when you're not aware of the pain around you. That is the most special, truly unique time. It is the core of adult lament.

  Barry Privett

  Pain, Unique, Childhood

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