Famous Quotes & Sayings

H. P. Lovecraft

The most merciful thing in the world, I think, is the inability of the human mind to correlate all its contents. We live on a placid island of ignorance in the midst of black seas of the infinity, and it was not meant that we should voyage far.

H. G. Wells

Everywhere in the world there are ignorance and prejudice, but the greatest complex of these, with the most extensive prestige and the most intimate entanglement with traditional institutions, is the Roman Catholic Church.

Jean de la Bruyere

Profound ignorance makes a man dogmatical.

Jean de la Bruyere

Incivility is not a Vice of the Soul, but the effect of several Vices; of Vanity, Ignorance of Duty, Laziness, Stupidity, Distraction, Contempt of others, and Jealousy.

Jean Baudrillard

The opposite of knowledge is not ignorance, but deceit and fraud.

Joseph Smith, Jr.

We cannot be saved until we have risen above all our enemies, not the least of which is ignorance.

Mustafa Kemal Ataturk

Science is the most reliable guide for civilization, for life, for success in the world. Searching a guide other than the science is meaning carelessness, ignorance and heresy.

Murray Rothbard

It is no crime to be ignorant of economics, which is, after all, a specialized discipline and one that most people consider to be a ‘dismal science.’ But it is totally irresponsible to have a loud and vociferous opinion on economic subjects while remaining in this state of ignorance.

Molly Ivins

This is the man (Ronald Reagan) who proved that ignorance is no handicap to the presidency

Ken Wilber

If you really want to change the world, you must first understand it adequately, or all you will do is reproduce in larger numbers your own ignorance.

Karl A. Menninger

The adjuration to be "normal" seems shockingly repellent to me; I see neither hope nor comfort in sinking to that low level. I think it is ignorance that makes people think of abnormality only with horror and allows them to remain undismayed at the proximity of "normal" to average and mediocre. For surely anyone who achieves anything is, essentially, abnormal.

Karen Traviss

If we were given one word of information in our entire history, how we'd treasure it! how we'd pore over ever syllable, divining it's meaning, arguing its importance; how we'd examine it and wring every lesson we could from it. Yet today we have trillions of words, tidal waves of information and the smallest detail of every action our government and businesses take is easily available to us at the touch of a button. And yet...we ignore it, and learn nothing from it. One day we'll die of voluntary ignorance

Kris Carr

We consume far too many animal products, processed and refined foods, saturated fats, and empty calories. Industries that profit from both our ignorance and our misfortune spoon-feed us confusion and deception.

Ivan Turgenev

Sternly, remorselessly, fate guides each of us; only at the beginning, when we're absorbed in details, in all sorts of nonsense, in ourselves, are we unaware of its harsh hand.

Isaiah Berlin

All forms of tampering with human beings, getting at them, shaping them against their will to your own pattern, all thought control and conditioning is, therefore, a denial of that in men which makes them men and their values ultimate.

Isaiah Berlin

Injustice, poverty, slavery, ignorance - these may be cured by reform or revolution. But men do not live only by fighting evils. They live by positive goals, individual and collective, a vast variety of them, seldom predictable, at times incompatible.

Irvin D. Yalom

You will search the world over and not find a nonsuperstitious community. As long as there is ignorance, there will be adherence to superstition. Dispelling ignorance is the only solution. That is why I teach.

Ina May Gaskin

Nothing in medical literature today communicates the idea that women's bodies are well-designed for birth. Ignorance of the capacities of women's bodies can flourish and quickly spread into the popular culture when the medical profession is unable to distinguish between ancient wisdom and superstitious belief.

Idries Shah

There is a Persian proverb: 'To test that which has been tested is ignorance.' To try to test something without the means of testing is even worse.

Hyman Rickover

Responsibility is a unique concept... You may share it with others, but your portion is not diminished. You may delegate it, but it is still with you... If responsibility is rightfully yours, no evasion, or ignorance or passing the blame can shift the burden to someone else. Unless you can point your finger at the man who is responsible when something goes wrong, then you have never had anyone really responsible.

More and more people are beginning to feel that there must be another way of thinking, perceiving, and acting. And perhaps the beginning of another way of looking at the world is to re-evaluate all of our beliefs. It is, after all, our beliefs that determine what we are, experience, and expect. When we are willing to take a new look at our own beliefs, we then have an opportunity to begin rediscovering who and what we are and to redetermine our true purpose on Earth.

Harry Lorayne

Curiosity killed the cat, but where human beings are concerned, the only thing a healthy curiosity can kill is ignorance.

J. M. Coetzee

We must cultivate, all of us, a certain ignorance, a certain blindness, or society will not be tolerable.

J. K. Rowling

Imperfect understanding is often more dangerous than ignorance.

Ivan Pavlov

Never think that you already know all. However highly you are appraised, always have the courage to say to yourself-I am ignorant.

H. G. Wells

Ignorance is not an extension of time

H. L. Mencken

To argue that the gaps in knowledge which confront the seeker must be filled, not by patient inquiry, but by intuition or revelation, is simply to give ignorance a gratuitous and preposterous dignity.

Grant Bowler

The truth that I know for sure is that I may have an opinion, but I do not know the truth, and the other thing I know for sure is that certainty is the root of all ignorance and the root of all evil.

Georg C. Lichtenberg

Nothing puts a greater obstacle in the way of the progress of knowledge than thinking that one knows what one does not yet know.

Gary Hamel

If customer ignorance is a profit centre for you, you're in trouble.

Friedrich Nietzsche

O sancta simplicitas! What strange simplification and falsification mankind lives on! One can never cease to marvel once one has acquired eyes for this marvel! How we have made everything around us bright and free and easy and simple! How we have known how to bestow on our senses a passport to everything superficial, on our thoughts a divine desire for wanton gambling and false conclusions! - how we have from the very beginning understood how to retain our ignorance so as to enjoy an almost inconceivable freedom, frivolity, impetuosity, bravery, cheerfulness of life, so as to enjoy life!

Jean Henri Fabre

Without feeling abashed by my ignorance, I confess that I am absolutely unable to say. In the absence of an appearance of learning, my answer has at least one merit, that of perfect sincerity.

Giacomo Leopardi

Ignorance is the greatest source of happiness.