This site is dedicated to the memory of Dr. Alan William Smolowe who gave birth to the creation of this database.
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 |
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.
There is no liberty to men whose passions are stronger than their religious feelings; there is no liberty to men in whom ignorance predominates over knowledge; there is no liberty to men who know not how to govern themselves.
Isaac Asimov, born Isaak Yudovich Ozimov
If knowledge can create problems, it is not through ignorance that we can solve them."
Ibn `Arabi, full name was Abū 'Abdillāh Muḥammad ibn 'Alī ibn Muḥammad ibn `Arabī
Beyond doubt, the worshipper of God shows ignorance when he criticizes others on account of their beliefs. If he understood the saying of Junayd, “The color of the water is the color of the vessel containing it,” he would not interfere with the beliefs of others, but would perceive God in every form and in every belief.
The whole family of pride and ignorance are incestuous and mutually beget each other.
The very essence of truth is plainness and brightness; the darkness an crookedness is our own. the wisdom of god created understanding, fit and proportionable to truth, the object and end of it, as the ye to the thing visible. If our understanding have a film of ignorance over it, or be blear with gazing on other false glitterings, what is that to truth?
Darkness | God | Ignorance | Object | Truth | Understanding | Wisdom | God |
The plea of ignorance will never take away our responsibilities.