Ignorant Quotes - Page 33

• It's frightful that people who are so ignorant should have so much influence.

  George Orwell

  People, Influence

  "George Orwell: A Life in Letters".

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• Did I say "republic?" By God, yes, I said "republic!" Long live the glorious republic of the United States of America. Damn democracy. It is a fraudulent term used, often by ignorant persons but no less often by intellectual fakers, to describe an infamous mixture of socialism, graft, confiscation of property and denial of personal rights to individuals whose virtuous principles make them offensive.

  Westbrook Pegler

  Rights, America, Long

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• Fear can only prevail when victims are ignorant of the facts.

  Thomas Jefferson

  Facts, Terrorism, Victim

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• There are in fact four very significant stumbling blocks in the way of grasping the truth, which hinder every man however learned, and scarcely allow anyone to win a clear title to wisdom, namely, the example of weak and unworthy authority, longstanding custom, the feeling of the ignorant crowd, and the hiding of our own ignorance while making a display of our apparent knowledge.

  Roger Bacon

  Wisdom, Ignorance, Men

  "Teaching the pursuit of science". Book by John H. Woodburn and Ellsworth Scott Obourn, p. 70, 1965.

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• Rousseau had it backwards. We are NOT born free. We are born in the chains of the random and the reflexive, and are ignorant and unreasonable by simple nature. We must learn to be free, to organize the random and detect the reflexive, to acquire the knowledge of particulars and the powers of reason. The examined life is impossible if we cannot examine, order, classify, define, distinguish, always in minute particulars.

  Richard Mitchell

  Wisdom, Simple, Order

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• Hate is the last refuge of the ignorant. Love is the medicine. Compassion is the gift of the awakened ones.

  Jetsunma Ahkon Lhamo

  Love, Hate, Buddhism

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• The mythos-over-logos argument points to the fact that each child is born as ignorant as any caveman. What keeps the world from reverting to the Neandertal with each generation is the continuing, ongoing mythos, transformed into logos but still mythos, the huge body of common knowledge that unites our minds as cells are united in the body of man. To feel that one is not so united, that one can accept or discard this mythos as one pleases, is not to understand what the mythos is.

  Robert M. Pirsig

  Art, Children, Men

  "Zen and the Art of Motorcycle Maintenance: An Inquiry into Values (ZAMM)". Book by Robert M. Pirsig, 1974.

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• Neither you nor I nor anybody else knows what makes a mathematician tick. It is not a question of cleverness. I know many mathematicians who are far abler than I am, but they have not been so lucky. An illustration may be given by considering two miners. One may be an expert geologist, but he does not find the golden nuggets that the ignorant miner does.

  Louis J. Mordell

  Math, Two, Illustration

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• Several devices he has to draw souls to sin, and several plots he has to keep souls from all holy and heavenly services, and several stratagems he has to keep souls in a mourning, staggering, doubting and questioning condition. He has several devices to destroy the great and honorable, the wise and learned, the blind and ignorant, the rich and the poor, the real and the nominal Christians.

  Thomas Brooks

  Christian, Wise, Real

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• Wonderful nature has a double meaning, which dazzles great minds and blinds uncultivated souls. When man is ignorant, when the desert is filled with visions, the darkness of solitude is added to the darkness of intelligence; hence, in man, the possibilities of perdition

  Victor Hugo

  Men, Soul, Darkness

  Victor Hugo (2013). “Delphi Complete Works of Victor Hugo (Illustrated)”, p.7026, Delphi Classics

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• A mind devoid of prepossessions is likely to be devoid of all mental furniture. And the historian who thinks that he can clean his mind as he would a slate with a wet sponge, is ignorant of the simplest facts of mental life.

  Allen Johnson

  Thinking, History, Mind

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• Never get to the point where you will be ashamed to ask anybody for information. The ignorant man will always be ignorant if he fears that by asking another for information he will display ignorance. Better once display your ignorance of a certain subject than always know nothing of it.

  Booker T. Washington

  Ignorance, Men, Asking

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• The man of understanding can no more sit quiet and resigned while his country lets its literature decay, and lets good writing meet with contempt, than a good doctor could sit quiet and contented while some ignorant child was infecting itself with tuberculosis under the impression that it was merely eating jam tarts.

  Ezra Pound

  Letting Go, Country, Children

  "Confucius to Cummings: An Anthology of Poetry".

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• It's so easy to persecute an older, overweight, unwise, crude, ignorant woman who may very well be a good person at heart who has achieved a great deal in her life. So easy to vilify her and hate her and try to destroy her life. Woe to anyone today who is not slender, young, clever and politically correct.

  Anne Rice

  Clever, Hate, Heart

  "Anne Rice defends Paula Deen" by Erin Strecker, www.cnn.com. June 25, 2013.

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• With savages, the weak in body or mind are soon eliminated. We civilized men, on the other hand, do our utmost to check the process of elimination. We build asylums for the imbecile, the maimed and the sick. Thus the weak members of civilized societies propagate their kind. No one who has attended to the breeding of domestic animals will doubt that this must be highly injurious to the race of man. Hardly anyone is so ignorant as to allow his worst animals to breed.

  Charles Darwin

  Animal, Men, Theory Of Evolution

  "The Descent of Man". Book by Charles Darwin, February 24, 1871.

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• It's a fact that people are afraid of what they don't understand. And most are too lazy or ignorant to find out more.

  Richelle Mead

  People, Lazy, Facts

  Richelle Mead (2014). “Silver Shadows: A Bloodlines Novel”, p.83, Penguin

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• He has taught me the meaning of devotion. With him, I know a secret comfort and a private peace. He has brought me understanding where before I was ignorant.

  Gene Hill

  Dog, Understanding, Secret

  Steve Smith, Gene Hill (1999). “Just Mutts: A Tribute to the Rogues of Dogdom”, p.93, Willow Creek Press

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• I never got a pass mark in math... Just imagine - mathematicians now use my prints to illustrate their books. Funny me consorting with all these learned folks, as though I were their long lost brother. I guess they are unaware of the fact that I am ignorant about the whole thing.

  M. C. Escher

  Beauty, Art, Brother

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• The tragedy is not that nonviolence did not work against the Nazis, but that it was so seldom utilized... The churches as a whole were too docile or anti-semitic, and too ignorant of the nonviolent message of the Gospel, to act effectively to resist the Nazis or act in solidarity with the Jews.

  Walter Wink

  Tragedy, Church, Messages

  "Engaging the Powers: Discernment and Resistance in a World of Domination". Book by Walter Wink (pp. 254-256), 1992.

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• By realizing that we are ignorant of the most important things, we realize at the same time that the most important thing for us, or the one thing needful, is quest for knowledge of the most important things or quest for wisdom.

  Leo Strauss

  Important, Quests, Realizing

  Leo Strauss (1953). “Natural Right and History”, p.36, University of Chicago Press

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• Up and down the the still sparsely settled coast of British North America, groups of men-intellectuals and farmers, scholars and merchants, the learned and the ignorant-gathered for the purpose of constructing enlightened governments.

  Bernard Bailyn

  Men, America, Groups

  Bernard Bailyn (2012). “The Ideological Origins of the American Revolution”, p.231, Harvard University Press

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• Every creed is a rock in running water: humanity sweeps by it. Every creed cries to the universe, "Halt!" A creed is the ignorant Past bulling the enlightened Present.

  Robert Green Ingersoll

  Running, Past, Rocks

  Robert Green Ingersoll (1907). “The works of Robert G. Ingersoll”, p.90, Library of Alexandria

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• Gold in its native state is but dull, unornamental stuff, and only lowborn metals excite the admiration of the ignorant with an ostentatious glitter. However, like the rest of the world, I still go on underrating men of gold and glorifying men of mica.

  Mark Twain

  Men, Gold, Goes On

  Mark Twain (2008). “10 Books in 1”, p.583, Shoes & Ships & Sealing Wax

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• The happiness even of the naturalist depends in some measure upon his ignorance, which still leaves him new worlds of this kind to conquer. He may have reached the very Z of knowledge in the books, but he still feels half ignorant until he has confirmed each bright particular with his eyes.

  Robert Wilson Lynd

  Book, Ignorance, Eye

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• I have been accused of being ignorant of economics (although I am the founder and Chairman of the Board of a company which publishes seven professional economic newsletters), of being ignorant of sociology (although I am trained in sociology and was C. Wright Mills' research assistant at Columbia), of being unable to use statistics (although I earned my living as a professional statistician for five years) and of ignoring political factors (although all my graduate training was in political science).

  Lloyd deMause

  Years, Political, Training

  Lloyd DeMause (1975). “The New Psychohistory”, New York : Psychohistory Press

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