Famous Quotes & Sayings

Frederic Bastiat

We cannot but be astonished at the ease with which men resign themselves to ignorance about what is most important for them to know; and we may be certain that they are determined to remain invincibly ignorant if they once come to consider it as axiomatic that there are no absolute principles.

Frances Wright

The knowledge of one generation is the ignorance of the next.

Frances Wright

It is in vain that we would circumscribe the power of one half of our race, and that half by far the most important and influential. If they exert it not for good, they will for evil; if they advance not knowledge, they will perpetuate ignorance. Let women stand where they may in the scale of improvement, their position decides that of the race.

Frances Mayes

One of those flash epiphanies of travel, the realization that worlds you'd love vibrantly exist outside your ignorance of them. The vitality of many lives you know nothing about. The breeze lifting a blue curtain in a doorway billows just the same whether you are lucky enough to observe it or not. Travel gives such jolts. I could live in this town, so how is it that I've never been here before today?

George Washington

The foundation of our Empire was not laid in the gloomy age of Ignorance and Superstition, but at an Epoch when the rights of mankind were better understood and more clearly defined, than at any former period.

George Santayana

Theory helps us to bear our ignorance of facts.

George Santayana

The whole machinery of our intelligence, our general ideas and laws, fixed and external objects, principles, persons, and gods, are so many symbolic, algebraic expressions. They stand for experience; experience which we are incapable of retaining and surveying in its multitudinous immediacy. We should flounder hopelessly, like the animals, did we not keep ourselves afloat and direct our course by these intellectual devices. Theory helps us to bear our ignorance of fact.

George MacDonald Fraser

The two pillars of 'political correctness' are, a) willful ignorance, and b) a steadfast refusal to face the truth.

Franz Grillparzer

A cure by regression is homeopathic, like healing the damage done by ministers and ignorance with stupidity and Jesuits.

Jeff Lindsay

It was clear to me that it wouldn't matter what I did - they would never truly appreciate me or learn what I had to offer. They were far beyond fickle - they were insensible, like kittens,predatory little things, distracted by the first bit of string or shiny bauble that rolled across the floor, and nothing I could ever say or do could possibly make any kind of dent in their willful ignorance.

Jerry Uelsmann

It is the illusion of knowledge, not ignorance, that keeps one from growing.

Jermaine Jackson

You can't argue with stupidity.

Jeremy Taylor

It is impossible to make people understand their ignorance, for it requires knowledge to perceive it; and, therefore, he that can perceive it hath it not.

Jeremy Taylor

To be proud of learning is the greatest ignorance.

Jeaniene Frost

Whoever said ignorance was bliss was shortsighted.

George Eliot

It is as useless to fight against the interpretations of ignorance as to whip the fog.

George Eliot

Ignorance is not so damnable as humbug, but when it prescribes pills it may happen to do more harm.

George Eliot

Ignorance ... is a painless evil; so, I should think, is dirt, considering the merry faces that go along with it.

George Eliot

All our ignorance brings us closer to death.

George Eliot

It is a common sentence that knowledge is power; but who hath duly considered or set forth the power of ignorance? Knowledge slowly builds up what ignorance in an hour pulls down.

George Eliot

Knowledge slowly builds up what Ignorance in an hour pulls down.

Christoph Waltz

That's exactly what I'm driving at. 'Basterds' was interesting because it was, in a way, unfamiliar. I thought well, OK. Let's leave the comfort zone and just risk it. Why not? Because, exactly as you said, in a way, by taking that risk, I make up a little bit for my ignorance in the subject, or rather, the genre.

F. Scott Fitzgerald

Aristocracy's only an admission that certain traits which we call fine - courage and honor and beauty and all that sort of thing - can best be developed in a favorable environment, where you don't have the warpings of ignorance and necessity.

George Takei

The only thing worse than human ignorance is human pride in that ignorance.

George Porter

To solve a problem is to create new problems, new knowledge immediately reveals new areas of ignorance, and the need for new experiments. At least, in the field of fast reactions, the experiments do not take very long to perform.

Garth Stein

That which we manifest is before us; we are the creators of our own destiny. Be it through intention or ignorance, our successes and our failures have been brought on by none other than ourselves.

Frederick Douglass

Poverty, ignorance and degradation are the combined evils, these constitute the social disease of the free colored people of the US.

Frederick Douglass

Where justice is denied, where poverty is enforced, . . . neither persons nor property will be safe.

George Eliot

Ignorance gives one a large range of probabilities.

George Eliot

The beginning of an acquaintance whether with persons or things is to get a definite outline of our ignorance.

Federico Fellini

Don't tell me what I'm doing; I don't want to know.

Ezra Pound

There is natural ignorance and there is artificial ignorance. I should say at the present moment the artificial ignorance is about eighty-five per cent.

Eugenio Montale

I have been judged to be a pessimist but what abyss of ignorance and low egoism is not hidden in one who thinks that Man is the god of himself and that his future can only be triumphant?