quotations about ignorance
There is nothing more frightful than ignorance in action.
JOHANN WOLFGANG VON GOETHE
Collected Works
A great deal of intelligence can be invested in ignorance when the need for illusion is deep.
SAUL BELLOW
To Jerusalem and Back
The only thing worse than human ignorance is human pride in that ignorance.
GEORGE TAKEI
Facebook post, May 26, 2013
The ignorant classes are the dangerous classes. Ignorance is the womb of monsters.
HENRY WARD BEECHER
Proverbs from Plymouth Pulpit
The blind see what they want to see.
DAN BROWN
The Da Vinci Code
From ignorance our comfort flows.
The only wretched are the wise.
MATTHEW PRIOR
To the Hon. Charles Montague
It is as useless to fight against the interpretations of ignorance as to whip the fog.
GEORGE ELIOT, Middlemarch
The reason why intelligence cannot compete with ignorance in a friendly discussion can be arrived at by analysis. We all know the capacity, the straightforwardness and the general mental honesty of an intelligent man. He is intelligent because he thinks. He goes through a mental process, correlates ideas, adds, subtracts and divides thoughts, striving to arrive at a sane and therefore an intelligent conclusion. On the other hand, the ignorant man doesn't think, because he has never been trained to think. His mentality can't get any further than a baby with its blocks, trying to build a house. His ignorance is impenetrable, in-so-far as immediate mental activity is possible.
WILLIAM HENRY MCMASTERS
"On the Impenetrability of Ignorance", Originality and Other Essays
We live on a placid island of ignorance in the midst of black seas of infinity, and it was not meant that we should voyage far.
H. P. LOVECRAFT
"The Call of Cthulhu"
Feed ignorance with predigested mental food only, otherwise you will have a case of ignorantia dyspepsia on your hands and for that there is no medicinal cure.
WILLIAM HENRY MCMASTERS
"On the Impenetrability of Ignorance", Originality and Other Essays
Ignorance served no useful purpose; it changed no fact, it offered no shelter.
MICHELLE WEST
"Echoes", Assassin Fantastic
If you hide your ignorance, no one will hit you, and you'll never learn.
RAY BRADBURY
Fahrenheit 451
Ignorance has been well represented under the similitude of a dungeon, where, though it is full of life, yet darkness and silence reign. But in society the bars and locks have been broken; the dungeon itself is demolished; the prisoners are out; they are in the midst of us. We have no security but to teach and renovate them.
HORACE MANN
Thoughts
The apparent foolishness of others is but too frequently our own ignorance.
ARTHUR HELPS
Thoughts in the Cloister and the Crowd
I would be -- for no knowledge is worth a straw -- Ignorant and wanton as the dawn.
WILLIAM BUTLER YEATS
"The Dawn", The Wild Swans at Coole
Any wise enemy is better than an ignorant friend.
ARABIC PROVERB
The insolence of the vulgar is in proportion to their ignorance. They treat everything with contempt which they do not understand.
WILLIAM HAZLITT
Characteristics
Ignorance isn't bliss, but sometimes ignorance makes it possible for us to sleep at night.
DEAN KOONTZ
Dark Rivers of the Heart
Ignorance is not so damnable as humbug, but when it prescribes pills it may happen to do more harm.
GEORGE ELIOT
Felix Holt
When an intelligent man enters into a discussion with a man of total ignorance, he is at a disadvantage because he has to do the thinking for both sides. He is at another disadvantage because he has to express his thoughts in language that the ignorant man will understand. He is at another disadvantage because he has to treat the ignorant man as an equal and in order to do that he has consciously to lower himself. He can't lift the ignorant man up and in order to be equals in the discussion the intelligent man must put himself on a plane beneath him.
WILLIAM HENRY MCMASTERS
"On the Impenetrability of Ignorance", Originality and Other Essays