This site is dedicated to the memory of Dr. Alan William Smolowe who gave birth to the creation of this database.
It is almost as difficult to make a man unlearn his errors as his knowledge. Mal-information is more hopeless that non-information; for error is always more busy than ignorance. Ignorance is a blank sheet, on which we may write; but error is a scribbled one, from which we must erase. Ignorance is contented to stand still with her back to the truth; but error is more presumptuous, and proceeds in the wrong direction. Ignorance has no light, but error flows a false one. The consequence is, that error, when she retraces her steps, has farther to go before she can arrive at truth, than ignorance.
Error | Ignorance | Knowledge | Light | Man | Truth | Wrong |
A man who knows the world will not only make the most of everything he does know, but of many things he does not know, and will gain more credit by his adroit mode of hiding his ignorance than the pedant by his awkward attempt to exhibit his erudition.
Error is always more busy than ignorance. Ignorance is a blank sheet on which we may write; but error is a scribbled one from which we must first erase.
Daniel Boorstin, fully Daniel Joseph Boorstin
I have observed that the world has suffered far less from ignorance than from pretensions to knowledge. It is not skeptics or explorers but fanatics and ideologues who menace decency and progress. No agnostic ever burned anyone at the stake or tortured a pagan, a heretic, or an unbeliever.
Agnostic | Ignorance | Knowledge | Progress | World | Agnostic |
The recipe for perpetual ignorance is: Be satisfied with your opinions and content with your knowledge.
Learning teaches how to carry things in suspense without prejudice till you resolve.
It is without all controversy that learning doth make the minds of men gentle, amiable, and pliant to government; whereas ignorance makes them churlish, thwarting, and mutinous; and the evidence of time doth clear this assertion, considering that the most barbarous, rude and unlearned times have been most subject to tumults, seditions, and changes.
Assertion | Controversy | Evidence | Government | Ignorance | Learning | Men | Time |
Without controversy, learning doth make the mind of men gentle, generous, amiable and pliant to government; whereas ignorance makes them curlish, thwarting, and mutinous; and the evidence of time doth clear this assertion, considering that the most barbarous, rude, and unlearned times have been most subject to tumults, seditions, and changes.
Assertion | Controversy | Evidence | Government | Ignorance | Learning | Men | Mind | Time |
To lay aside all prejudice is to lay aside all principles. He who is destitute of principles is governed, theoretically and practically, by whims.
Prejudice | Principles |
Where there is no knowledge, ignorance calls itself knowledge.
Nicholas Black Elk, formally Heȟáka Sápa
Any man who is attached to things of this world is one who lives in ignorance and is being consumed by the snakes of his own passions.