Ignorant Quotes - Page 7

• When, to gratify a private appetite, it is once resolved upon that an ignorant and helpless creature shall be sacrificed, it is an easy matter to pick up sticks enough from any thicket where it has strayed, to make a fire to offer it up with.

  Laurence Sterne

  Fire, Matter, Sticks

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• The masses are still ungrateful or ignorant. They prefer murder, poisonings, and crimes generally to a literature possessed of style and feeling.

  George Sand

  Ungrateful, Feelings, Style

  George Sand (2009). “Letters of George Sand”, p.140, Cosimo, Inc.

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• Where is the reward of virtue? and what recompense has nature provided for such important sacrifices as those of life and fortune, which we must often make to it? O sons of earth! Are ye ignorant of the value of this celestial mistress? And do ye meanly inquire for her portion, when ye observe her genuine beauty?

  David Hume

  Son, Sacrifice, Mistress

  David Hume, Stephen Copley, Andrew Edgar (2008). “Selected Essays”, p.90, Oxford University Press

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• Intellectuals range through the finest gradations of kind and quality: from those who are merely educated neurotics, usually with strong hidden reactionary tendencies, through mediocrities of all kinds, to men of real brains and sensibility, more or less stiffened into various respectabilities or substitutes for respectability. The number of Ignorant Specialists is large. The number of hysterics and compulsives is also large.

  Louise Bogan

  Strong, Real, Men

  Louise Bogan (2005). “A poet's prose: selected writings of Louise Bogan : with the uncollected poems”, Swallow Press

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• it is always difficult to impress the ignorant.

  Lionel Shriver

  Ignorance, Difficult, Impress

  Lionel Shriver (2007). “A Perfectly Good Family: A Novel”, Harper Perennial

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• It is the ignorant person who seeks his or her own ends at the expense of the greater whole. It is the ignorant person, therefore, who is the selfish person. The truly wise person is never selfish.

  Ralph Waldo Trine

  Wise, Selfish, People

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• Let us consider how great a commodity of doctrine exists in books; how easily, how secretly, how safely they expose the nakedness of human ignorance without putting it to shame. These are the masters who instruct us without rods and ferules, without hard words and anger, without clothes or money. If you approach them, they are not asleep; if investigating you interrogate them, they conceal nothing; if you mistake them, they never grumble; if you are ignorant, they cannot laugh at you.

  Richard de Bury

  Mistake, Book, Ignorance

  Richard de Bury (2013). “Philobiblon: A Treatise on the Love of Books”, p.11, Cambridge University Press

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• Those parents who do not educate their sons are their enemies; for as is a crane among swans, so are ignorant so are ignorant sons in a public assembly.

  Chanakya

  Son, Swans, Parent

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• we are so little, so ignorant, so feeble an infant race crawling on a planet between immensities we haven't even begun to understand, that really we have no grounds for either congratulation or despair.

  Winifred Holtby

  Congratulations, Race, Despair

  Winifred Holtby (1937). “Pavements at Anderby: tales of "South riding" and other regions by Winifred Holtby”

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• Love points the way. Desire is its ignorant advisor.

  Elfriede Jelinek

  Desire, Way, Advisors

  Elfriede Jelinek (2010). “The Piano Teacher”, p.277, Profile Books

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• Although all men are born free, slavery has been the general lot of the human race. Ignorant--they have been cheated; asleep--they have been surprised; divided--the yoke has been forced upon them. But what is the lesson...? The people ought to be enlightened, to be awakened, to be united, that after establishing a government they should watch over it.... It is universally admitted that a well-instructed people alone can be permanently free.

  James Madison

  Men, Race, People

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• swearing is, as I have said, learning to the ignorant, eloquence to the blockhead, vivacity to the stupid, and wit to the coxcomb.

  Mary Collyer

  Stupid, Said, Vivacity

  Mary Collyer (1749). “Felicia To Charlotte: Being Letters From A Young Lady in the Country, To Her Friend in Town : Containing A Series of the Most Interesting Events, Interspersed with Moral Reflections ...”, p.203

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• Anyone who dares to speak about an aether is regarded as an ignorant and backward mind and he can only lose his credibility in scientific circles, although in reality those who criticize him use the same concept of intermediate medium in other words, whether it be fields, an associated fluid, a probability fluid, a pilot fluid, a quantum fluid, etc.

  Maurice Allais

  Reality, Circles, Mind

  "L'anisotropie de l'espace. La nécessaire révision de certains postulats des théories contemporaines. Les données de l'expérience" by Maurice Allais, Clément Juglar, Paris, (p. 506), 1997.

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• The clergy are at present divided into three sections: an immense body who are ignorant; a small proportion who know and are silent; and a minute minority who know and speak according to their knowledge.

  Thomas Huxley

  Three, Minorities, Body

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• Ignorant people always suppose that popular writers are wonderfully well-paid - and must be making rapid fortunes - because they neither starve in garrets, nor wear rags - at least in America.

  Eliza Leslie

  America, People, Rags

  Eliza Leslie (1839). “Miss Leslie's Behaviour Book: A Guide and Manual for Ladies as Regards Their Conversation; Manners; Dress; with Full Instructions and Advice in Letter Writing [!]; Receiving Presents; Incorrect Words”, p.259

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• The ignorant and the deluded are, I think, in a strange way to be envied. That which is not known of does not trouble us, while an imagined but insubstantial peril does not harm us. To know the truths behind reality is a far greater burden.

  H. P. Lovecraft

  Reality, Thinking, Doe

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• Zoologists have reckoned there are up to at least 750 species of animal that have been observed exhibiting same-sex behaviour, or gender role transformation (which is very common in a wide range of fauna). There is only one species on earth, however, which has exhibited homophobia or transphobia. And that is the species homo sapiens sapiens. Us. So let's not allow the foolish, ignorant or bigoted ever to use words like "natural."

  Stephen Fry

  Sex, Animal, Zoologist

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• Since there is no system of public education, the great majority of my fellow citizens is frighteningly ignorant. They have no idea where Iraq is. They accept as the gospel whatever the government tells them. Good grief, any other normal country would have been against the Iraq war! But we live in an abnormal country, governed by experts in deceptive advertising.

  Gore Vidal

  Country, War, Grief

  "The End of Gore Vidal". Interview with Lila Azam Zanganeh, www.guernicamag.com. August 15, 2012.

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• I'm just very interested in what my guests have to say. You have to be vigilant to stay ignorant.

  Stephen Colbert

  Guests, Vigilant

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• As the moon, though darkened with spots, gives us a much greater light than the stars that sewn all-luminous, so do the Scriptures afford more light than the brightest human authors. In them the ignorant may learn all requisite knowledge, and the most knowing may learn to discern their ignorance.

  Robert Boyle

  Bible, Stars, Ignorance

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• In the Bible the ignorant may learn all requisite knowledge, and the most knowing may learn to discern their ignorance.

  Robert Boyle

  Bible, Ignorance, Knowing

  Robert Boyle (1675). “Some considerations touching the style of the H. Scriptures; extracted from ... a discourse, concerning divers particulars belonging to the Bible ... The third edition”, p.53

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• The world, and the great and free United States in particular, is full of narrow-minded, ignorant, moronic, bigoted, cowardly, self-righteous, anemic, pig-headed, stupid, puritanical, hypocritical, prejudiced, fanatical, cocoa-blooded atavists, who soothe their inferiority complex by barking their hatred of anything new.

  Gertrude Atherton

  Stupid, Pigs, Self

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• To be ignorant of the past is to be forever a child.

  Marcus Tullius Cicero

  Children, Past, Forever

  "Orator Ad M. Brutum" by Cicero, chapter XXXIV, section 120,

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• I don't dabble in politics too much. I'm really ignorant to the world of politics. I'm not that smart, I'm not that cunning, it's just too much smoke and mirrors for me. I just don't want to play that game.

  Michael K. Williams

  Smart, Play, Mirrors

  "Talking With Our Mouths Full: Michael Kenneth Williams". Interview with Mark Anthony Green, www.gq.com. October 4, 2011.

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• The ignorant hath an Eagles wings, and an Owles eyes.
  [The ignorant hath an eagle's wings and an owl's eyes.]

  George Herbert

  Eye, Eagles, Wings

  George Herbert, Christopher Harvey, George Gilfillan (1857). “The poetical works of George Herbert”, p.319

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