Ignorance Quotes - Page 27

• There are many instances in science, where those closest to the intricacies of the subject have a more highly developed sense of its intractability than those at some remove. On the other hand, those at too great a distance may, I am well aware, mistake ignorance for perspective.

  Carl Sagan

  Mistake, Distance, Perspective

  "Dragons of Eden: Speculations on the Evolution of Human Intelligence".

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• But you can't make people listen. They have to come round in their own time, wondering what happened and why the world blew up around them. It can't last.

  Ray Bradbury

  People, World, Lasts

  Ray Bradbury (2016). “Fahrenheit 451”, p.74, Hamilton Books

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• Yet how hard most people work for mere dust and ashes and care, taking no thought of growing in knowledge and grace, never having time to get in sight of their own ignorance.

  John Muir

  Sight, Dust, People

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• Censoring books that deal with difficult, adolescent issues does not protect anybody. Quite the opposite. It leaves kids in the darkness and makes them vulnerable. Censorship is the child of fear and the father of ignorance. Our children cannot afford to have the truth of the world withheld from them

  Laurie Halse Anderson

  Children, Father, Book

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• One of those flash epiphanies of travel, the realization that worlds you'd love vibrantly exist outside your ignorance of them. The vitality of many lives you know nothing about. I could live in this town, so how is it that I've never been here before today?

  Frances Mayes

  Blue, Giving, Vitality

  "Frances Mayes travels the globe (sort of), not forgetting about Italy" by Jeanne Cooper, www.sfgate.com. April 20, 2006.

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• If the account given in Genesis is really true, ought we not, after all, to thank this serpent? He was the first schoolmaster, the first advocate of learning, the first enemy of ignorance, the first to whisper in human ears the sacred word liberty, the creator of ambition, the author of modesty, of inquiry, of doubt, of investigation, of progress and of civilization.

  Robert Green Ingersoll

  Ambition, Civilization, Doubt

  Robert Green Ingersoll (1907). “The works of Robert G. Ingersoll”, p.18, Library of Alexandria

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• Actions have consequences. Ignorance about the nature of those actions does not free a person from responsibility for the consequences. (28)

  Stephen Dobyns

  Responsibility, Actions Have Consequences, Doe

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• When ignorance is bliss, there's folly in wisdom.

  David Eddings

  Bliss, Ignorance Is Bliss, Folly

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• She feared the unknown as we all do, and her ignorance made the unknown infinitely vast.

  Joseph Conrad

  Made

  Joseph Conrad (1905). “Lord Jim”, p.289, McClure, Phillips & Company

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• When it shall be said in any country in the world my poor are happy; neither ignorance nor distress is to be found among them; my jails are empty of prisoners, my streets of beggars; the aged are not in want; the taxes are not oppressive; the rational world is my friend, because I am a friend of its happiness: When these things can be said, there may that country boast its Constitution and its Government

  Thomas Paine

  Happiness, Country, Government

  Thomas Paine (1995). “Collected Writings”, p.649, Library of America

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• had no need of a guide to learn ignorance

  Voltaire

  Needs, Guides

  Voltaire (2016). “Voltaire – The Philosophical Works: Treatise On Tolerance, Philosophical Dictionary, Candide, Letters on England, Plato’s Dream, Dialogues, The Study of Nature, Ancient Faith and Fable, Zadig…: From the French writer, historian and philosopher, famous for his wit, his attacks on the established Catholic Church, and his advocacy of freedom of religion and freedom of expression”, p.2456, e-artnow

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• Instead of our drab slogging forth and back to the fishing boats, there's reason to live! We can lift ourselves out of ignorance, we can find ourselves as creatures of excellence and intelligence and skill. We can learn to be free! we can learn to fly!

  Richard Bach

  Fishing, Skills, Flying

  Richard Bach (2014). “Jonathan Livingston Seagull: The Complete Edition”, p.17, Simon and Schuster

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• We may please ourselves with the prospect of free and popular governments. But there is great danger that those governments will not make us happy. God grant they may. But I fear that in every assembly, members will obtain an influence by noise, not sense. By meanness, not greatness. By ignorance, not learning. By contracted hearts, not large souls.

  John Adams

  Heart, Greatness, Government

  John Adams, Robert Joseph Taylor (1979). “Papers of John Adams”

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• Desire, ignorance, and inequality—this is the trinity of bondage.

  Swami Vivekananda

  Inspirational, Motivational, Inspiring

  Swami Vivekananda (2015). “The Complete Works of Swami Vivekananda”, p.3821, Manonmani Publishers

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• For if leisure and security were enjoyed by all alike, the great mass of human beings who are normally stupefied by poverty would become literate and would learn to think for themselves; and when once they had done this, they would sooner or later realise that the privileged minority had no function, and they would sweep it away. In the long run, a hierarchical society was only possible on a basis of poverty and ignorance.

  George Orwell

  Running, Thinking, Long

  George Orwell, A.M. Heath (2003). “Animal Farm and 1984”, p.282, Houghton Mifflin Harcourt

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• A true scientist is bored by knowledge; it is the assault on ignorance that motivates him - the mysteries that previous discoveries have revealed.

  Matt Ridley

  Discovery, Bored, Mystery

  "Gaither's Dictionary of Scientific Quotations". Book edited by Carl C. Gaither, Alma E. Cavazos-Gaither, p. 2065, 2012.

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• But it is much later in the game now, and ignorance of the score is inexcusable. To be unaware that a technology comes equipped with a program for social change, to maintain that technology is neutral, to make the assumption that technology is always a friend to culture is, at this late hour, stupidity plain and simple.

  Neil Postman

  Technology, Simple, Games

  Neil Postman (2005). “Amusing Ourselves to Death: Public Discourse in the Age of Show Business”, p.130, Penguin

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• In happy ignorance, I sighed for a world I did not know, where I hoped to find every pleasure and enjoyment which my heart could desire; and now, on my return from that wide world... how many disappointed hopes and unsuccessful plans have I brought back!

  Johann Wolfgang von Goethe

  Heart, Desire, World

  Johann Wolfgang von Goethe (2016). “THE SORROWS OF YOUNG WERTHER (Literary Classics Series): Historical Romance Novel”, p.46, e-artnow

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• Because there is no greater evil than ignorance and the destruction of genius. Ignorance has been responsible for more death, more bigotry, and more sin than any other force. It is the destroyer of mankind.

  Richelle Mead

  Evil, Genius, Sin

  Richelle Mead (2010). “Succubus Shadows”, p.137, Kensington Publishing Corp.

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• Violent, irrational, intolerant, allied to racism and tribalism and bigotry, invested in ignorance and hostile to free inquiry, contemptuous of women and coercive toward children: organized religion ought to have a great deal on its conscience.

  Christopher Hitchens

  Children, Racism, Inquiry

  Christopher Hitchens (2011). “God is Not Great”, p.44, Atlantic Books Ltd

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• Enlightenment is not about becoming divine. Instead it's about becoming more fully human. . . . It is the end of ignorance.

  Surya Das

  Enlightenment, Becoming, Divine

  Surya Das, Lama Surya Das (1997). “Awakening the Buddha Within: Eight Steps to Enlightenment : Tibetan Wisdom for the Western World”, Broadway

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• Sometimes we find ourselves walking through life blindfolded, and we try to deny that we're the ones who securely tied the knot.

  Jodi Picoult

  Walking Through Life, Trying, Sometimes

  Jodi Picoult (2012). “The Jodi Picoult Reader's Companion: A Collection of Excerpts”, p.579, Simon and Schuster

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• He was impregnably armored by his good intentions and his ignorance.

  Graham Greene

  Good Intentions, Intention

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• With a shiver of foreboding he saw his marriage becoming what most of the other marriages about him were: a dull association of material and social interests held together by ignorance on the one side and hypocrisy on the other.

  Edith Wharton

  Hypocrisy, Together, Dull

  Edith Wharton (2010). “The Age of Innocence”, p.36, Bibliolis Books

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• Don't tell me what I'm doing; I don't want to know.

  Federico Fellini

  Want, Willful Ignorance, Knows

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