Famous Quotes & Sayings

Swami Vivekananda

Strength, strength it is that we want so much in this life, for what we call sin and sorrow have all one cause, and that is our weakness. With weakness comes ignorance, and with ignorance comes misery.

Thucydides

Again, in our enterprises we present the singular spectacle of daring and deliberation, each carried to its highest point, and both united in the same persons; although usually decision is the fruit of ignorance, hesitation of reflection. But the palm of courage will surely be adjudged most justly to those, who best know the difference between hardship and pleasure and yet are never tempted to shrink from danger. In generosity we are equally singular, acquiring our friends by conferring, not by receiving, favours.

Robert Andrews Millikan

Fullness of knowledge always and necessarily means some understanding of the depths of our ignorance, and that is always conducive to both humility and reverence.

Robert Andrews Millikan

This much I can say with definiteness - namely, that there is no scientific basis for the denial of religion - nor is there in my judgment any excuse for a conflict between science and religion, for their fields are entirely different. Men who know very little of science and men who know very little of religion do indeed get to quarreling, and the onlookers imagine that there is a conflict between science and religion, whereas the conflict is only between two different species of ignorance.

Robert A. Heinlein

If God existed (a question concerning which Jubal maintained a meticulous intellectual neutrality) and if He desired to be worshiped (a proposition which Jubal found inherently improbable but conceivably possible in the dim light of his own ignorance), then (stipulating affirmatively both the above) it nevertheless seemed wildly unlikely to Jubal to the point of reductio ad absurdum that a God potent to shape galaxies would be titillated and swayed by the whoop-te-do nonsense the Fosterites offered Him as "worship.

Robert A. Heinlein

I'm not trying to frighten you, but only a fool makes predictions based on ignorance; I am not that sort of fool.

Thomas Watson

If a wicked man seems to have peace at death, it is not from the knowledge of his happiness, but from the ignorance of his danger.

Tom Hanks

Help and you will abolish apathy-the void that is so quickly filled by ignorance and evil.

Tacitus

In careless ignorance they think it civilization, when in reality it is a portion of their slavery...To ravage, to slaughter, to usurp under false pretenses, they call empire; and where they make a desert, they call it peace.

Tacitus

Everything unknown is magnified. [Lat., Omne ignotum pro magnifico est.]

Swami Vivekananda

Ignorance is death, knowledge is life. Life is of very little value, if it is a life in the dark, groping through ignorance and misery.

Rumi

If in the darkness of ignorance, you don’t recognize a person’s true nature, look to see whom he has chosen for his leader.

Steve Allen

God is by definition the holder of all possible knowledge, it would be impossible for him to have faith in anything. Faith, then, is built upon ignorance and hope.

Stephen Covey

Admission of ignorance is often the first step in our education.

Thomas Carlyle

Statistics, one may hope, will improve gradually, and become good for something. Meanwhile, it is to be feared the crabbed satirist was partly right, as things go: "A judicious man," says he, "looks at Statistics, not to get knowledge, but to save himself from having ignorance foisted on him."

Thomas Carlyle

Social Science, is not a 'gay science' but rueful, which finds the secret of this universe in 'supply and demand' and reduces the duty of human governors to that of letting men alone. Not a 'gay science', no, a dreary, desolate, and indeed quite abject and distressing one; what we might call, the dismal science

Thomas Carlyle

Perfect ignorance is quiet, perfect knowledge is quiet; not so the transition from the former to the latter.

Thomas Carlyle

A judicious man uses statistics, not to get knowledge, but to save himself from having ignorance foisted upon him.

Tom Watson

All the problems of the world could be settled easily if men were only willing to think.

Stanislaw Jerzy Lec

Each juggler should be trained in the ignorance of the laws of physics.

Stanislaw Jerzy Lec

Every now and then you meet a man whose ignorance is encyclopedic.

Stanislaw Lem

A specialist is a barbarian whose ignorance is not well-rounded.

Spike Lee

We've got to turn this backward thinking around where ignorance is championed over intelligence. Young black kids being ridiculed by their peers for getting A's and speaking proper English: that's criminal.

Sigrid Undset

Easy for them to keep their youth who will never learn a lesson ...

Sun Tzu

Hostile armies may face each other for years, striving for the victory which is decided in a single day. This being so, to remain in ignorance of the enemy's condition simply because one grudges the outlay of a hundred ounces of silver in honors and emoluments, is the height of inhumanity.

Robert Browning

Of power does Man possess no particle: Of knowledge-just so much as show that still It ends in ignorance on every side...

Richard Mitchell

Educationists are entertaining. We can always find a good laugh in their prose, with its special, ludicrous combination of ignorance and pretentiousness.

T. D. Jakes

Ignorance is brought about by assumption.

T. S. Eliot

The endless cycle of idea and action, / Endless invention, endless experiment, / Brings knowledge of motion, but not of stillness; / Knowledge of speech, but not of silence; / Knowledge of words, and ignorance of The Word.

T. S. Eliot

To arrive where you are, to get from where you are not, You must go by a way wherein there is no ecstasy. In order to arrive at what you do not know You must go by a way which is the way of ignorance. In order to possess what you do not possess You must go by the way of dispossession. In order to arrive at what you are not You must go through the way in which you are not. And what you do not know is the only thing you know And what you own is what you do not own And where you are is where you are not.

T. S. Eliot

The endless cycle of idea and action, Endless invention, endless experiment, Brings knowledge of motion, but not of stillness; Knowledge of speech, but not of silence; Knowledge of words, and ignorance of the Word. All our knowledge brings us nearer to our ignorance, All our ignorance brings us nearer to death, But nearness to death no nearer to God. Where is the Life we have lost in living? Where is the wisdom we have lost in knowledge? Where is the knowledge we have lost in information? The cycles of Heaven in twenty centuries Bring us farther from God and nearer to the Dust.

T. S. Eliot

All our knowledge brings us nearer to our ignorance.

Sydney J. Harris

Ignorance per se is not nearly as dangerous as ignorance of ignorance.