Famous Quotes & Sayings

Henri Frederic Amiel

Man never knows what he wants; he aspires to penetrate mysteries and as soon as he has, wants to re-establish them. Ignorance irritates him and knowledge cloys.

Henri Frederic Amiel

If ignorance and passion are the foes of popular morality, it must be confessed that moral indifference is the malady of the cultivated classes.

Helen Keller

Ignorance, poverty, and greed must disappear so that light can prevail in all places.

Helen Keller

There is a dangerous optimism of ignorance and indifference.

Gore Vidal

I have always regarded as a stroke of good fortune that I was not born or brought up in a small American town; they may be the backbone of the nation, but they are also the backbone of ignorance, bigotry, and boredom, all in vast quantities.

Grover Cleveland

We will not forget that Liberty has made her home here, nor shall her chosen altar be neglected...A stream of light shall pierce the darkness of ignorance and mans oppression until Liberty enlightens the world.

James D. Watson

Racists have often used pseudoscience to justify their socially damaging views; watch these films to see how science, by replacing ignorance with knowledge, can undo that damage.

James Bryce

To most people, nothing is more troublesome than the effort of thinking.

Jackie DeShannon

Ignorance is kind of bliss.

Izaak Walton

So long as thou are ignorant be not ashamed to learn. Ignorance is the greatest of all infirmities, and when justified, the chiefest of all follies.

Isaac Asimov

It was easy to cover up ignorance by the mystical word "intuition.

Isaac Asimov

When I read about the way in which library funds are being cut and cut, I can only think that American society has found one more way to destroy itself.

Isaac Asimov

The false notion that democracy means that my ignorance is just as good as your knowledge.

Isaac Asimov

There are many aspects of the universe that still cannot be explained satisfactorily by science; but ignorance only implies ignorance that may someday be conquered. To surrender to ignorance and call it God has always been premature, and it remains premature today.

Isaac Asimov

Uncertainty that comes from knowledge (knowing what you don't know) is different from uncertainty coming from ignorance.

Isaac Asimov

If knowledge can create problems, it is not through ignorance that we can solve them.

Isaac Asimov

There is a cult of ignorance in the United States, and there has always been. The strain of anti-intellectualism has been a constant thread winding its way through our political and cultural life, nurtured by the false notion that democracy means that "my ignorance is just as good as your knowledge.

Jeaniene Frost

I thought you'd gotten over your whoring when you left him, Catherine, but it seems you only postponed it." Bones' face turned to stone, and he answered her even before I could snap out an indignant response. "Don't you ever speak to her that way again." There was pure warning in the whip of his words. "You can call me any name you like and more, but I will not stand by while you slander her out of your own ignorance.

Jeff Buckley

Be the best. No negativity. No weakness. No acquiescence to fear or disaster. No errors of ignorance. No evasion to reality

Jean-Paul Sartre

Absurd, irreducible; nothing — not even a profound and secret delirium of nature — could explain it. Obviously I did not know everything, I had not seen the seeds sprout, or the tree grow. But faced with this great wrinkled paw, neither ignorance nor knowledge was important: the world of explanations and reasons is not the world of existence. A circle is not absurd, it is clearly explained by the rotation of a straight segment around one of its extremities. But neither does a circle exist. This root, on the other hand, existed in such a way that I could not explain it.

George William Curtis

A tree which has lost its head will never recover it again, and will survive only as a monument of the ignorance and folly of its Tormentor.

Jim Garrison

Until as recently as November of 1966, I had complete faith in the Warren Report. Of course, my faith in the Report was grounded in ignorance, since I had never read it.

Jim Hightower

If ignorance goes to forty dollars a barrel, I want drilling rights to George Bush's head.

Jeff Foxworthy

My whole career can be summed up with 'Ignorance is bliss.' When you do not know better, you do not really worry about failing.

James Buchan

There are about 15 million Muslims in the EU. They face ignorance, insult and even persecution. They cannot be wished away. To impose Enlightenment freedoms is self-defeating. Anyway, the Muslims have their own enlightenment.

James A. Garfield

I admitted, that the world had existed millions of years. I am astonished at the ignorance of the masses on these subjects. Hugh Miller has it right when he says that 'the battle of evidences must now be fought on the field of the natural sciences.'

James A. Garfield

Statistics has been the handmaid of science, and has poured a flood of light upon the dark questions of famine and pestilence, ignorance and crime, disease and death.

James A. Garfield

Now more than ever the people are responsible for the character of their Congress. If that body be ignorant, reckless, and corrupt, it is because the people tolerate ignorance, recklessness, and corruption.

James A. Baldwin

No one knows very much about the life of another. This ignorance becomes vivid, if you love another. Love sets the imagination on fire, and, also, eventually, chars the imagination into a harder element: imagination cannot match love, cannot plunge so deep, or range so wide.

James A. Baldwin

It is certain, in any case, that ignorance, allied with power, is the most ferocious enemy justice can have.

Jack Vance

Somebody else's ignorance is bliss.

Gary Snyder

I try to hold both history and wilderness in mind, that my poems may the true measure of things and stand against the unbalance and ignorance of our times.

Gary Snyder

As a poet I hold the most archaic values on earth . . . the fertility of the soil, the magic of animals, the power-vision in solitude, the terrifying initiation and rebirth, the love and ecstasy of the dance, the common work of the tribe. I try to hold both history and the wilderness in mind, that my poems may approach the true measure of things and stand against the unbalance and ignorance of our times.