Ignorance Quotes

Rationality belongs to the cool observer, but because of the stupidity of the average man, he follows not reason, but faith, and the naive faith requires necessary illusion and emotionally potent oversimplifications which are provided by the myth-maker to keep ordinary person on course.

~ Reinhold Niebuhr

I am in good company, simply following those in front of me and knowing others are following behind. We are on our way up a narrow staircase. The bannister is a thick rope suggesting safety. The stairs go around and around inside a church tower; or perhaps it is a minaret? The whorls of the staircase grow narrower and narrower, but as there are so many people behind there is no longer any possibility of turning around or even stopping. The pressure from behind foeces me on. The staircase suddenly stops at a garbage chute in the wall. When i open the hatch and squeeze my way through the hole, i find myself on the outside of the tower. The rope has dissappeared. It is totally dark. I cling on to the slippery, icy wall of the tower while vainly trying to find a foothold in the emptiness.

~ Sven Lindqvist

Given a thimbleful of [dramatic] facts we rush to make generalizations as large as a tub.

~ Gordon W. Allport

Isn't it funny how ignorance is the source of strength of so many?

~ Lionel Suggs

It wasn’t until I slowed the car and rolled down the windows that I realized I spend most of my days driving ‘through’ life without driving ‘in’ life. So, I’ve decided to walk because the pace is slower and the windows are always down.

~ Craig D. Lounsbrough

The worst denial of all is being in denial that we’re in denial in the first place. And I would wonder if that’s not exactly where most of us live out most of our lives.

~ Craig D. Lounsbrough

I want to do what little I can to make my country truly free, to broaden the intellectual horizon of our people, to destroy the prejudices born of ignorance and fear, to do away with the blind worship of the ignoble past, with the idea that all the great and good are dead, that the living are totally depraved, that all pleasures are sins, that sighs and groans are alone pleasing to God, that thought is dangerous, that intellectual courage is a crime, that cowardice is a virtue, that a certain belief is necessary to secure salvation, that to carry a cross in this world will give us a palm in the next, and that we must allow some priest to be the pilot of our souls.

~ Robert G. Ingersoll

Reading illuminates our path with the brightest light.

~ Lailah Gifty Akita

I was raised to be ashamed of my ignorance, and to try to do something about it if at all possible.

~ Mark Slouka

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.

~ Garth Stein

Life without knowing your destiny leads to “rat races”, depression and frustration, and attempt to commit suicide

~ Sunday Adelaja

Self-abuse is an infringement on one’s own destiny caused by either ignorance about oneself or negligence of one’s purpose!

~ Israelmore Ayivor

. . . the mysteries, on belief in which theology would hang the destinies of mankind, are cunningly devised fables whose origin and growth are traceable to the age of Ignorance, the mother of credulity.

~ Edward Clodd

One of the most deadly causes of destruction of divine destinies is when a leader is failing, but he or she does not know it. Ignorance about your role is a death plot against people's successes.

~ Israelmore Ayivor

Fate is unalterable only in the sense that given a cause, a certain result must follow, but no cause is inevitable in itself, and man can shape his world if he does not resign himself to ignorance.

~ Pearl S. Buck

Curiosity takes ignorance seriously, and is confident enough to admit when it does not know. It is aware of not knowing, and it sets out to do something about it

~ Alain De Botton

Innate in nearly every artistic nature is a wanton, treacherous penchant for accepting injustice when it creates beauty and showing sympathy for and paying homage to aristocratic privilege.

~ Thomas Mann

Education reform doesn't come cheap. But the price of ignorance is far, far greater

~ Rania Al Abdullah

Great future through ignorance often ends in great regret because God often times gives us what we need in a package we do not want.

~ Peter Isekiigbe De Rock

Blessed are the ignorant fools of the world, for they know not the unspeakable horrors that await us all.

~ Dorkly

The most obvious and the most distinctive features of the History of Civilisation, during the last fifty years, is the wonderful increase of industrial production by the application of machinery, the improvement of old technical processes and the invention of new ones, accompanied by an even more remarkable development of old and new means of locomotion and intercommunication. By this rapid and vast multiplication of the commodities and conveniences of existence, the general standard of comfort has been raised, the ravages of pestilence and famine have been checked, and the natural obstacles, which time and space offer to mutual intercourse, have been reduced in a manner, and to an extent, unknown to former ages. The diminution or removal of local ignorance and prejudice, the creation of common interests among the most widely separated peoples, and the strengthening of the forces of the organisation of the commonwealth against those of political or social anarchy, thus effected, have exerted an influence on the present and future fortunes of mankind the full significance of which may be divined, but cannot, as yet, be estimated at its full value.

~ Thomas Henry Huxley

Today the most civilized countries of the world spend a maximum of their income on war and a minimum on education. The twenty-first century will reverse this order. It will be more glorious to fight against ignorance than to die on the field of battle. The discovery of a new scientific truth will be more important than the squabbles of diplomats. Even the newspapers of our own day are beginning to treat scientific discoveries and the creation of fresh philosophical concepts as news. The newspapers of the twenty-first century will give a mere 'stick' in the back pages to accounts of crime or political controversies, but will headline on the front pages the proclamation of a new scientific hypothesis.Progress along such lines will be impossible while nations persist in the savage practice of killing each other off. I inherited from my father, an erudite man who labored hard for peace, an ineradicable hatred of war.

~ Nikola Tesla

What has been done is little—scarcely a beginning; yet it is much in comparison with the total blank of a century past. And our knowledge will, we are easily persuaded, appear in turn the merest ignorance to those who come after us.

~ Agnes Mary Clerke

Humanity has the stars in its future, and that future is too important to be lost under the burden of juvenile folly and ignorant superstition.

~ Isaac Asimov

Bigotry is the disease of ignorance, of morbid minds; enthusiasm of the free and buoyant. Education and free discussion are the antidotes of both. We are destined to be a barrier against the returns of ignorance and barbarism. Old Europe will have to lean on our shoulders, and to hobble along by our side, under the monkish trammels of priests and kings, as she can. What a Colossus shall we be when the Southern continent comes up to our mark! What a stand will it secure as a ralliance for the reason & freedom of the globe! I like the dreams of the future better than the history of the past. So good night. I will dream on, always fancying that Mrs Adams and yourself are by my side marking the progress and the obliquities of ages and countries.

~ Thomas Jefferson

How merciful a thing is man's ignorance of his immediate future! What a ghastly, paralysing thing it would have been if all those present could have known what was about to happen within a matter of seconds! For nothing short of pre-knowledge could have stopped the occurrence, so suddenly it sprang upon them.

~ Mervyn Peake

Your level of ignorance is based on what you believe you know and your ego.

~ Kemi Sogunle

When I find that stubbornness continually overrides common sense regardless of the logic of my argument, it seems that the only effective solution is to tell them to go ahead and stick their finger in the socket. And what I find is that what my argument failed to solve, electricity does quite nicely.

~ Craig D. Lounsbrough

Faith means I chose not to know, which is different than ignorance which refuses to know.

~ Craig D. Lounsbrough

If you need someone to explain morality to you, then you likely have little of it to draw from.

~ Auliq Ice

Problems created by ignorance are always solved by information. The best information is an inspiration that brings an end to the belief “it’s impossible”!

~ Israelmore Ayivor

Sometimes you hear people saying that there is a secret to get to where you wanna be, but at a certain point, you discover that you are the secret of your success.

~ Michael Bassey Johnson

Anything you don’t want to deal with can always be written off as being “in the past” and ignored, but in doing so, you sweep it under a rug where it doesn't go away with time – it becomes time itself, and takes on the illusion of life as we think we know it.

~ A.j. Darkholme

The ignorance of the world often makes people believe that life should be black and white – that you must choose sides – and so the world of colourful gradients goes unadmired.

~ A.j. Darkholme

Science is the belief in the ignorance of experts.

~ Hafiz

Those who are ignorant of Geology, find no difficulty in believing that the world was made as it is; and the shepherd, untutored in history, sees no reason to regard the green mounds which indicate the site of a Roman camp, as aught but part and parcel of the primeval hill-side.

~ Thomas Henry Huxley

I do not believe in the collective wisdom of individual ignorance.

~ Thomas Carlyle

It is not science which leads to unbelief but rather ignorance. The ignorant man thinks he understands something provided that he sees it every day. The natural philosopher walks amid enigmas, always striving to understand and always half-understanding. He learns to believe what he does not understand, and that is a step on the road to faith.

~ Jan Potocki

Yes, and words are not deeds, Solanka allowed, moving off fretfully. Though words can become deeds. If said in the right place and at the right time, they can move mountains and change the world. Also, uh-huh, not knowing what you're doing - separating deeds from the words that define them - was apparently becoming an acceptable excuse. To say I didn't mean it was to erase meaning from your misdeeds, at least in the opinion of the Beloved ALis of the world. Could that be so? Obviously, no. No, it simply could not. Many people would say that even a genuine act of repentance could not atone for a crime, much less this unexplained blankness - an infinitely lesser excuse, a mere assertion of ignorance that wouldn't even register on any scale of regret.

~ Salman Rushdie

The more deeper you think, the more silent you become. You understand the reasons behind the reason. It may not necessarily mean you are short of words. You however know what ignorance can trigger and how to deal with ignorance and purpose. The timeliness of your word is surely on point.

~ Ernest Agyemang Yeboah