Great Throughts Treasury

This site is dedicated to the memory of Dr. Alan William Smolowe who gave birth to the creation of this database.

Ignorance

"The greatest vested interest is not property, but ignorance." - William Jovanovich, born Vladimir Jovanovich

"The greater our knowledge increases, the greater our ignorance unfolds." - John F. Kennedy, fully John Fitzgerald "Jack" Kennedy

"Intelligence is derived from two words - inter and legere - inter meaning "between" and legere meaning "to choose." An intelligent person, therefore, is one who has learned "to choose between." He knows that good is better than evil, that confidence should supersede fear, that love is superior to hate, that gentleness is better than cruelty, forbearance than intolerance, compassion than arrogance and that truth has more virtue than ignorance." - J. Martin Klotsche

"The wise man is wise because he understands his ignorance... The wise are not learned; the learned are not wise." -

"To know one's ignorance is the best part of knowledge." -

"Knowledge is leagued with the universe, and findeth a friend in all things; but ignorance is everywhere a stranger, unwelcome; ill at ease and out of place." - Gottfried Leibniz, fully Gottfried Wilhalm von Leibniz, Baron von Leibnitz

"Sophistry is only fit to make men more conceited in their ignorance." - John Locke

"Truth, whether in or out of fashion, is the measure of knowledge, and the business of the understanding; whatever is besides that, however authorized by consent, or recommended by rarity, is nothing but ignorance, or something worse." - John Locke

"Any frontal attack on ignorance is bound to fail because the masses are always ready to defend their most precious possession - their ignorance." - Hendrik Willem Van Loon

"Half-knowledge is worse than ignorance." -

"What the world has to eradicate is fear and ignorance." - Jan Masaryk, fully Jan Garrigue Masaryk

"O, how full of error is the judgment of mankind. They wonder at results when they are ignorant of the reasons. They call it fortune when they know not the cause, and thus worship their own ignorance changed into a deity." - Metastasio, aka Pietro Petastasio, pseudonymn for Pietro Antonio Domenico Trapassi NULL

"The laws of conscience, which we pretend to be derived from nature, proceed from custom... It may be said with some plausibility that there is an abecedarian (meaning alphabetically or rudimentary) ignorance that comes before knowledge, and another doctoral ignorance that comes after knowledge; ignorance that knowledge creates and engenders, just as it undoes and destroys the first." - Michel de Montaigne, fully Lord Michel Eyquem de Montaigne

"Wonder is the foundation of all philosophy, inquiry the progress, ignorance the end... It's a sign of contraction of the mind when it is content or of weariness." - Michel de Montaigne, fully Lord Michel Eyquem de Montaigne

"Philosophy has been called the knowledge of our knowledge of our ignorance, or in the language of Kant, the knowledge of the limits of our knowledge." - Max Müller, fully Friedrich Max Müller

"The inexperienced teacher, fearing his own ignorance, is afraid to admit it. Perhaps that courage only come when one knows to what extent ignorance is almost universal." -

"Silence is the highest wisdom of a fool as speech is the greatest trial of a wise man. If thou wouldst be known as wise, let thy words show thee so; if thou doubt thy words, let thy silence feign thee so. It is not a greater point of wisdom to discover knowledge than to hide ignorance." - Francis Quarles

"What the world needs is a fusion of the sciences and the humanities. The humanities express the symbolic, poetic and prophetic qualities of the human spirit. Without them we would not be conscious of our history; we would lose our aspirations and the graces of expression that move men's hearts. The sciences express the creative urge in man to construct a universe which is comprehensible in terms of the human intellect. Without them, mankind would find itself bewildered in a world of natural forces beyond comprehension, victims of ignorance, superstition and fear." - Isidor Isaac Rabi

"Ignorance of the law excuses no man; not that all men know the law, but because it is an excuse every man will plead, and no man can tell me how to confute him." - John Selden

"Wisdom arrives when we are willing to journey to our ignorance." - Noah benShea

"To believe in something not yet proved and to underwrite it with our lives; it is the only way we can leave the future open. Man, surrounded by facts, permitting himself no surprise, no intuitive flash, no great hypothesis, no risk, is in a locked cell. Ignorance cannot seal the mind and imagination more securely." - Lillian Smith, fully Lillian Eugenia Smith

"The more a man enters the light of understanding, the more aware he is of his own ignorance. And when the light reveals itself fully and unites with him and draws him into itself, so that he finds himself alone in a sea of light, then he is emptied of all knowledge and immersed in absolute knowing." - Symeon the New Theologian, fully Saint Symeon the New Theologian NULL

"A religion without mystery must be a religion without God. In dwelling on divine mysteries, keep thy heart humble, thy thoughts reverent, thy soul holy. Let not philosophy be ashamed to be confuted, nor logic to be confounded, nor reason to be surpassed. What thou canst not prove, approve; what thou canst not comprehend, believe; what thou canst believe, admire and love and obey. so shall thine ignorance be satisfied in thy faith, and thy doubt be swallowed up in thy reverence, and thy faith be as influential as sight. Put out thing own candle, and then shalt thou see clearly the sun of righteousness." - Jeremy Taylor

"Art hath no enemy but ignorance." - John Taylor, aka 'Water Poet'

"Man has the capacity of almost complete control of fate. It he fails it will be by the ignorance or folly of men." -

"Knowledge holdeth by the hilt, and heweth out a road to conquest; Ignorance graspeth the blade, and is wounded by its own good sword." -

"The jury system puts a ban upon intelligence and honesty and a premium upon ignorance, stupidity and perjury." -

"It is poverty in a rich man to despise the poor and ignorance in a wise man to despise the ignorant." - Constance C. Vigil

"Viewing health as something to achieve gives rise to effort and striving, which create stress. And this can interfere with the natural healing tendencies already present within us. The meditative traditions see things differently; they regard health as intrinsic to our nature, and thus already fully present within us... Dis-ease results from a loss of connection with our intrinsic health, caused by ignorance, distraction or confusion." - John Welwood

"He that is not aware of his ignorance will be only misled by his knowledge." - Richard Whately

"Now that man has again evolved to a point where he can make the transition into fourth dimensional consciousness, communication and contacts with extraterrestrial beings has greatly increased. The presence of extraterrestrials should be on of the most reassuring events that is taking place on Earth. Instead, it is often the cause of great fear and apprehension. Fear is born of ignorance. Were it not so, people would welcome their space brothers with open arms. All major governments have repeatedly received information to explain the ET presence. They have been ignored as the product of a deranged mind. At some point some one must come to the realization that the problem of the existence of spacecraft is not going to disappear because man officially refuses to recognize their presence." - Joseph Whitfield

"Seize the moment of excited curiosity of any subject, to solve your doubts; for if you let it pass, the desire may never return, and you may remain in ignorance." - William Wirt

"Ignorance, poverty, and vanity make many soldiers." - Johann Georg Ritter von Zimmermann

"If ignorance and passions are foes of popular morality, it must be confessed that moral indifference is the malady of the cultivated classes." - Henri Frédéric Amiel

"An innate knowledge, or rather an acquired ignorance, suggests to it straightaway the step to be taken, the decisive act, the unanswerable word. Yet effort remains indispensable, endurance and perseverance likewise. But they come of themselves, they develop of their own accord, in a soul acting and acted upon, whose liberty coincides with the divine activity." - Henri Bergson, aka Henri-Louis Bergson

"If you think education is expensive, try ignorance!" - Anton Theophilus Boisen

"Beware of the man who works hard to learn something, learns it, and finds himself no wiser than before. He is full of murderous resentment of people who are ignorant without having come by their ignorance the hard way." -

"Profound ignorance makes a man dogmatic. The man who knows nothing thinks he is teaching others what he has just learned himself; the man who knows a great deal cannot imagine that what he is saying is not common knowledge, and speaks more indifferently." -

"Those indeed are conquerors who, as I have now, have conquered the intoxications (the mental intoxications arising from ignorance, sensuality, or craving after future life). Evil dispositions have ceased in me; therefore it is I that am conqueror!" -

"The world is the book where eternal Wisdom wrote its own ideas, and the living temple where, depicting its own acts and likeness, it decorated the height and the depth with living statues; so that every spirit, to guard against profanity, should read and contemplate here art and government, and each should say: “I fill the universe, seeing God in all things.” But we, souls bound to books and dead temples, copied with many mistakes from the living, place these things before such instruction. O ills, quarrels, ignorance, labors, pains, make us aware of our falling away: O let us, in God’s name, return to the original." - Tommaso Campanella, baptized Giovanni Domenico Campanella

"In wonder all philosophy began; in wonder it ends; and admiration fills up the interspace. But the first wonder is the offspring of ignorance: the last is the parent of adoration." - Samuel Taylor Coleridge

"Never let your persistence and passion turn into stubbornness and ignorance." - Anthony J. D'Angelo

"A little learning is a dangerous thing, but a lot of ignorance is just as bad." - Bob Edwards, fully Robert Alan "Bob" Edwards

"Could it be that liberation, not knowledge, is the true end purpose of human life and even its meaning? And might this liberation be achieved through non-rational means: power, sexuality, revolution, resignation, creativity, compassion, or solidarity? If this predicament is not so much ignorance (of something) as bondage (to something), what must we be liberated from, and what are we therefore liberated for?" - Stephen A. Erickson

"Much that we hug today as knowledge is ignorance pure and simple… It makes the mind wander and even reduces it to a vacuity." - Mahatma Gandhi, fully Mohandas Karamchand Gandhi, aka Bapu

"The lower animals are our brethren. I include among them the lion and the tiger. We do not know how to live with these carnivorous beasts and poisonous reptiles because of our ignorance. When man learns better, he will learn to befriend even these. Today he does not even know how to befriend a man of a different religion or from a different country." - Mahatma Gandhi, fully Mohandas Karamchand Gandhi, aka Bapu

"God abides in the heart of all beings, but due to our ignorance, He seems so far, so unreal, and we move here and there in search of God like a lifeless doll mounted on a machine." -

"While all complain of our ignorance and error, everyone exempts himself." -

"There is nothing more dangerous than ignorance being practiced." - Johann Wolfgang von Goethe

"There is nothing more frightful than ignorance in action." - Johann Wolfgang von Goethe