Ignorant Quotes - Page 12

• 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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• Man enjoys living on the edge of his dreams and neglects the real things of the world which are so beautiful. The ignorant and indifferent destroy beautiful things merely by looking at the marble. Things that remake the soul of him who understands them.

  Auguste Rodin

  Beautiful, Dream, Real

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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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• I know that the blacks, take them half enlightened and ignorant, are more humane and merciful than the most enlightened and refined European that can be found in all the earth.

  David Walker

  Half, Earth, Enlightened

  David Walker (2008). “Walker's Appeal”, p.28, Applewood Books

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• Those who wish to be ignorant and free, believe in something that never was and never shall be.

  Thomas Jefferson

  Believe, Wish

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• God grant me the serenity to accept that people are ignorant, the courage to uphold the law when I'm hostile, & the wisdom to realize that murder is illegal.

  Oscar Wilde

  Funny, Law, People

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• To be ignorant or unconvinced of one's own needs has become the unforgivable anti-social act. The good citizen is one who imputes standardized needs to himself with such conviction that he drowns out any desire for alternatives, much less the renunciation of need.

  Ivan Illich

  Desire, Needs, Alternatives

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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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• Lawsuits generally originate with the obstinate and the ignorant, but they do not end with them; and that lawyer was right who left all his money to the support of an asylum for fools and lunatics, saying that from such he got it, and to such he would bequeath it.

  Jeremy Bentham

  Support, Asylums, Fool

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• There never was any party, faction, sect, or cabal whatsoever, in which the most ignorant were not the most violent; for a bee is not a busier animal than a blockhead.

  Alexander Pope

  Party, Animal, Bees

  Alexander Pope (1812). “The works of Alexander Pope. With a selection of explanatory notes, and the account of his life by dr. Johnson”, p.227

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• The Christ is a myth. The Holy Ghost Priestcraft overshadowed the harlot Superstition; this Christ was born; and the Joseph of humanity, beguiled by the Gabriel of credulity, was induced to support the family. But the soldiers of Reason have crucified the illegitimate impostor, he is dead; and the ignorant disciples and hysterical women who still linger about the cross should take his body down and bury it.

  John Remsburg

  Support, Soldier, Humanity

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• Agnostics are people who, like myself, confess themselves to be hopelessly ignorant concerning a variety of matters, about which metaphysicians and theologians, both orthodox and heterodox, dogmatize with the utmost confidence.

  Herbert Spencer

  People, Atheism, Matter

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• To grow old is to lose everything. Aging, everybody knows it. Even when we are young, we glimpse it sometimes, and nod our heads when a grandfather dies. Then we row for years on the midsummer pond, ignorant and content.

  Donald Hall

  Years, Grandfather, Glimpse

  Donald Hall (2015). “The Selected Poems of Donald Hall”, p.133, Houghton Mifflin Harcourt

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• You're damn right we need a rational code of morality and ethics. But not much progress can be made in that direction while we've still got a majority ranting about gods, devils, souls, and absolute morality, and using an ancient book written by ignorant nomads as a guide.

  Doug Graham

  Book, Soul, Progress

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• I'm guessing our soldiers are happy to be leaving Iraq. It is no fun being in a country where there's crumbling infrastructure and an ignorant population, but they said they're happy to come home anyway.

  Bill Maher

  Country, Fun, Home

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• And it came to pass that in the hands of the ignorant, the words of the Bible were used to beat plowshares into swords

  Alan Watts

  Hands, Used, Beats

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• Virtue is always too much of a piece and too ignorant of those shades of feeling and of temperament that enable us to squint when we are placed in a false position.

  Honore de Balzac

  Feelings, Pieces, Shade

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• Let me be ignorant, and in nothing good, but graciously to know I am no better.

  William Shakespeare

  Let Me, Knows

  William Shakespeare (1833). “The plays and poems of William Shakspeare”, p.89

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• My brother had just been appointed Secretary of Nevada Territory--an office of such majesty that it concentrated in itself the duties and dignities of Treasurer, Comptroller, Secretary of State, and Acting Governor in the Governor's absence. A salary of eighteen hundred dollars a year and the title of "Mr. Secretary," gave to the great position an air of wild and imposing grandeur. I was young and ignorant, and I envied my brother.

  Mark Twain

  Brother, Book, Years

  Mark Twain (2008). “10 Books in 1”, p.541, Shoes & Ships & Sealing Wax

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• We are all ignorant. We are just ignorant about different things.

  Will Rogers

  Ignorance, Different, Different Things

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• Nothing is so dangerous as an ignorant friend; a wise enemy is worth more.
  [Fr., Rien n'est si dangereux qu'un ignorant ami;
  Mieux vaudrait un sage ennemi.]

  Jean de La Fontaine

  Wise, Ignorance, Enemy

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• Good sense and good-nature are never separated, though the ignorant world has thought otherwise. Good-nature, by which I mean beneficence and candor, is the product of right reason.

  John Dryden

  Mean, World, Reason

  John Dryden (1750). “Select essays on the belles lettres”, p.95

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• Tis not the wholesome sharp mortality,
  Or modest anger of a satiric spirit,
  That hurts or wounds the body of a state,
  But the sinister application
  Of the malicious, ignorant, and base
  Interpreter; who will distort and strain
  The general scope and purpose of an author
  To his particular and private spleen.

  Ben Jonson

  Hurt, Criticism, Purpose

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• There is a sort of knowledge beyond the power of learning to bestow, and this is to be had in conversation; so necessary is this to the understanding the characters of men, that none are more ignorant of them than those learned pedants whose lives have been entirely consumed in colleges and among books; for however exquisitely human nature may have been described by writers the true practical system can be learned only in the world.

  Henry Fielding

  Book, Character, College

  Henry Fielding (1818). “Select Works of Henry Fielding Esq: To which is Prefaced an Original Account of the Life and Writings of the Author”, p.5

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• There is no slight danger from general ignorance; and the only choice which Providence has graciously left to a vicious government is either to fall by the people, if they are suffered to become enlightened, or with them, if they are kept enslaved and ignorant.

  Samuel Taylor Coleridge

  Fall, Ignorance, Government

  Samuel Taylor Coleridge (1867). “The Friend: a series of essays ... First American, from the second London edition”, p.40

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