Ignorant Quotes - Page 6

• 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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• Have charity; have patience; have mercy. Never bring a human being, however silly, ignorant, or weak--above all, any little child--to shame and confusion of face. Never by petulance, by suspicion, by ridicule, even by selfish and silly haste--never, above all, by indulging in the devilish pleasure of a sneer--crush what is finest and rouse up what is coarsest in the heart of any fellow-creature.

  Charles Kingsley

  Crush, Children, Selfish

  Charles Kingsley (2008). “Daily Thoughts (EasyRead Super Large 18pt Edition)”, p.253, ReadHowYouWant.com

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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 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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• Does a man reproach thee for being proud or ill-natured, envious or conceited, ignorant or detracting? Consider with thyself whether his reproaches are true. If they are not, consider that thou art not the person whom he reproaches, but that he reviles an imaginary being, and perhaps loves what thou really art, though he hates what thou appearest to be.

  Epictetus

  Art, Hate, Conceited

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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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• I think the world is in the mess it's in because we are spiritually ignorant.

  Shirley MacLaine

  Thinking, World, Spirituality

  Shirley MacLaine (1987). “It's all in the playing”, Bantam

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• Lord, for the erring thought
  Not unto evil wrought:
  Lord, for the wicked will
  Betrayed, and baffled still:
  For the heart from itself kept,
  Our thanksgiving accept.
  For ignorant hopes that were
  Broken to our blind prayer:
  For pain, death, sorrow, sent
  Unto our chastisement:
  For all loss of seeming good,
  Quicken our gratitude.

  William Dean Howells

  Gratitude, Prayer, Pain

  William Dean Howells (2015). “Delphi Complete Works of William Dean Howells (Illustrated)”, p.9085, Delphi Classics

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• Certainly I do not wish that instead of these masters I had read baby books, written down to children, and with such ignorant dullness that they blunt the sense and corrupt the tastes of the still plastic human being. But I do wish that I had read no books at all till later - that I had lived with toys, and played in the open air. Children should not cull the fruits of reflection and observation early, but expand in the sun, and let thoughts come to them. They should not through books antedate their actual experiences.

  Margaret Fuller

  Baby, Children, Book

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• Duty itself is supreme delight when love is the inducement and labor. By such a principle the ignorant are enlightened, the hard-hearted softened, the disobedient reformed, and the faithful encouraged.

  Hosea Ballou

  Love Is, Faithful, Principles

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• I have known several persons of great fame for wisdom in public affairs and councils governed by foolish servants. I have known great ministers, distinguished for wit and learning, who preferred none but dunces. I have known men of valor cowards to their wives. I have known men of cunning perpetually cheated. I knew three ministers who would exactly compute and settle the accounts of a kingdom, wholly ignorant of their own economy.

  Horace Walpole

  Men, Wife, Coward

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• The monstrosity of bureaucracy, I thought: always the pint-pot judging the gallon, the scribe's, the door-keeper's world. Always the stupidity of people who feel certain about things they never try to find out. A world that educates people to be ignorant - that is what this world of ours is.

  Freya Stark

  Doors, Judging, People

  Freya Stark (1964). “The Journey's Echo: Selections”

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• most people did not care to be taught what they did not already know; it made them feel ignorant.

  Mary McCarthy

  Education, Learning, People

  Mary McCarthy (2017). “Mary McCarthy: Novels 1963-1979”, p.397, Library of America

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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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• 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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• As to ethics, unfortunately, we are still at sea. We never did have any popular base for what little ethics we knew, except the religious theories, and now that our faith is shaken in those theories we cannot account for ethics at all. It is no wonder we behave badly, we are literally ignorant of the laws of ethics, which is the simplest of sciences, the most necessary, the most continuously needed. The childish misconduct of our 'revolted youth' is quite equaled by that of older people, and neither young nor old seem to have any understanding of the reasons why conduct is 'good' or 'bad.

  Charlotte Perkins Gilman

  Religious, Sea, Law

  Charlotte Perkins Gilman (1935). “The Living of Charlotte Perkins Gilman: An Autobiography”, p.323, Univ of Wisconsin Press

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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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• 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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• 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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• 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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• Over time, I started becoming more aware of the vastness and complexity of the universe, which led me away from any sort of conventional Christianity. I still love the teachings of Christ, but I also believe that the human condition prevents us from having any true objective knowledge of the universe. All human belief systems are inherently flawed. If I had to label myself now, I'd call myself a Taoist-Christian-agnostic quantum mechanic. Also, there's nothing in the actual Bible that limits a Christian in their interest in science. Anti-science is a function of ignorant fundamentalism.

  Moby

  Christian, Teaching, Believe

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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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• 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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