Ignorance Quotes

If he were allowed contact with foreigners he would discover that they are creatures similar to himself and that most of what he has been told about them is lies. The sealed world in which he lives would be broken, and the fear, hatred, and self-righteousness on which his morale depends might evaporate. It is therefore realized on all sides that however ofter Persia, or Egypt, or Java, or Ceylon may change hands, the main frontiers must never be crossed by anything except bombs.

~ George Orwell

Even the humblest Party member is expected to be competent, industrious, and even intelligent within narrow limits, but it is also necessary that he should be a credulous and ignorant fanatic whose prevailing moods are fear, hatred, adulation, and orgiastic triumph. In other words it is necessary that he should have the mentality appropriate to a state of war. It does not matter whether the war is actually happening, and, since no decisive victory is possible, it does not matter whether the war is going well or badly. All that is needed is that a state of war should exist.

~ George Orwell

High School students in America debate why President Roosevelt didn't bomb the rail lines to Hitler's camps. Their children may ask, a generation from now, why the West stared at far clearer satellite images of Kim Jong Il's camps, and did nothing.

~ Blaine Harden

Millions cheer the warriorspilling blood across the ringwhile the one who stands for peaceis ridiculed and shamed.Must hearts forever sufferfrom ignorance and greed?Can bombs heal our soulsor set our spirits free?

~ Aberjhani

The failure of a person is wrapped in his ignorance about his strengths.

~ Israelmore Ayivor

If a nation expects to be ignorant & free, in a state of civilisation, it expects what never was & never will be. The functionaries of every government have propensities to command at will the liberty & property of their constituents. There is no safe deposit for these but with the people themselves; nor can they be safe with them without information. Where the press is free and every man able to read, all is safe.

~ Thomas Jefferson

At its root, the logic is that of the Grand Inquisitor, who bitterly assailed Christ for offering people freedom and thus condemning them to misery. The Church must correct the evil work of Christ by offering the miserable mass of humanity the gift they most desire and need: absolute submission. It must “vanquish freedom” so as “to make men happy” and provide the total “community of worship” that they avidly seek. In the modern secular age, this means worship of the state religion, which in the Western democracies incorporates the doctrine of submission to the masters of the system of public subsidy, private profit, called free enterprise. The people must be kept in ignorance, reduced to jingoist incantations, for their own good. And like the Grand Inquisitor, who employs the forces of miracle, mystery, and authority “to conquer and hold captive for ever the conscience of these impotent rebels for their happiness” and to deny them the freedom of choice they so fear and despise, so the “cool observers” must create the “necessary illusions” and “emotionally potent oversimplifications” that keep the ignorant and stupid masses disciplined and content.

~ Noam Chomsky

We work hard to believe that our actions really don’t affect others all that much because we want the license to act without thinking all that much.

~ Craig D. Lounsbrough

If anyone else asked that question, O He Who Is Terrible and Great, I would have said they were an ignorant fool; in you it is a sign of the disarming simplicity which is the fount of all virtue.

~ Jonathan Stroud

Some people have great ideas maybe once or twice in their life, and then they discover electricity or fire or outer space or something. I mean, the kind of brilliant ideas that change the whole world. Some people never have them at all... I get them two or three times a week.

~ Neil Gaiman

mystery is not founded in ignorance, mystery is founded in imagination

~ S. Spencer Baker

You need to be greedy or ignorant to truly want to live forever.

~ Mokokoma Mokhonoana

I leave the outdoors to you. It is too warm out there to read comfortable, and summer, like many uncomfortable things, is as welcome as a dim woman. It is tolerable to look at, but after being made to interact with it, nobody wants anything to do with it.

~ Michelle Franklin

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.

~ Isaac Asimov

He knows nothing, and he thinks he knows everything. That points clearly to a political career.

~ George Bernard Shaw

I believe in the forgiveness of sin and the redemption of ignorance.

~ Adlai E. Stevenson Ii

We have a large public that is very ignorant about public affairs and very susceptible to simplistic slogans by candidates who appear out of nowhere, have no track record, but mouth appealing slogans

~ Zbigniew Brzeziński

Eating is an agricultural act,' as Wendell Berry famously said. It is also an ecological act, and a political act, too. Though much has been done to obscure this simple fact, how and what we eat determines to a great extent the use we make of the world - and what is to become of it. To eat with a fuller consciousness of all that is at stake might sound like a burden, but in practice few things in life can afford quite as much satisfaction. By comparison, the pleasures of eating industrially, which is to say eating in ignorance, are fleeting. Many people today seem erfectly content eating at the end of an industrial food chain, without a thought in the world; this book is probably not for them.

~ Michael Pollan

In the days when hyenas of hate suckle the babes of men, and jackals of hypocrisy pimp their mothers’ broken hearts, may children not look to demons of ignorance for hope.

~ Aberjhani

Only priests and politicians benefit from a people's ignorance.

~ Ki Longfellow

It was his first definite encounter with the wary-eyed, platitudinous, evasive Labour leaders, and he realised at once the formidable barrier ofinert leadership they constituted, between the discontented masses and constructive change. They seemed to be almost entirely preoccupied byinternecine intrigues and the discipline of the Party. They were steeped in Party professionalism. They were not in any way traitors to their cause, or wilfully reactionary, but they had no minds for a renascent world. They meant nothing, but they did not know they meant nothing. They regarded Rud just as in their time they had regarded Liberalism, Fabianism, Communism, Science, suspecting them all, learning nothing from them, blankly resistant. They did not want ideas in politics. They just wanted to be the official representatives of organised labour and make what they could by it. Their manner betrayed their invincible resolution, as strong as an animal instinct, to play politics according to the rules, to manoeuvre for positions, to dig themselves into positions -- and squat...

~ H.g. Wells

I'm always amazed at the human capacity to not make fundamental changes, but instead merely adapt. I see these pictures of people in Beijing and New Delhi, walking around with masks on, because you can't walk outside your house and breathe? If you can't breathe?…If that's not the cue to make a fundamental change, I don't know what is!

~ Bill Maher

Apathy is the door to ignorance. Empathy is the door to wisdom.

~ Suzy Kassem

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.

~ F. Scott Fitzgerald

To attempt to know myself ‘apart’ from God is to choose to know nothing more than ‘a part’ of myself.

~ Craig D. Lounsbrough

God invites. We decline. And because of that single foolhardy decision we spend the rest of our lives ‘declining’.

~ Craig D. Lounsbrough

The Soul’s doership has arisen due to ignorance. Because of this, the inner working components of antaskaran [mind, intellect, chitta and ego] have arisen, and so has the relative-self [prakruti].

~ Dada Bhagwan

Once you understand the innate nature (relative self, prakruti) of the other person, you can remain in an attachment-free state with that person. It is Knowledge (Gnan) to understand the innate nature of a person, and once Knowledge arises, so will conduct.

~ Dada Bhagwan

The soul attracted leaned to the Abyss:It longed for the adventure of Ignorance

~ Sri Aurobindo

Abhorrence towards bitter circumstances and attachment towards sweet ones is the nature of agnan (ignorance of the self). Bitter and sweet will not exist if agnan (ignorance of the self) leaves.

~ Dada Bhagwan

Until ignorance, of one’s own Self (the Soul), is removed, illusory attachment (moha) will not go away.

~ Dada Bhagwan

Worldly life is not an impediment, your obstinacies and your ignorance of the self are only the impediments.

~ Dada Bhagwan

Happiness lies with us only. Desire for experiencing interactive pleasure is because of the association with the ignorance (of the Self). The one who does not have such association, he will ‘realize’ true happiness.

~ Dada Bhagwan

When you give up because challenges arise, you are just too ignorant about the power of the gifts you carry within you.

~ Israelmore Ayivor

A fool can't help but be a fool, but when others follow, he makes a fool of us all.

~ Dashanne Stokes

Bridges take people across rivers. Leaders take people across ignorance. With a leader, the destination of a journey is sure.

~ Israelmore Ayivor

Growing up in the digital age, I'm expected to embrace all forms of modern technology with blissful ignorance. Books were always one of few escapes from this, because reading a book means not having to look at another damned glowing screen - which is why, no matter how convenient or enhanced digital enthusiasts claim that Ebooks are, I'll never see them as real books. They're just files of binary data, and while they might be considered books by a large amount of people, Ebooks have lost the human quality that real books have. You can argue that this is pretentious or stupid or nostalgic, but ultimately what will you pass down to your children and grandchildren? A broken old Kindle device with the same files that millions of other people have, or the dog-eared paperbacks that you fell in love with and wrote your name in and got signed by the author and flipped through in the bookstore and kept with you for years, like an old friend?

~ Rebecca Mcnutt

Everybody should read something. Otherwise we all fall down into the pit of ignorance. Many are down there. Some people fall in it forever. Their lives mean nothing. They should not exist. (From the short story, Charity.)

~ Charles Baxter

Without reading many different books, you can never leave the port of ignorance and can never obtain the peaceful mind of knowing the truth!

~ Mehmet Murat Ildan

We sometimes reveal how ignorant or bored we were when we read a book by giving it 5-stars.

~ Mokokoma Mokhonoana