The Paris Review interview (1958)
Context: I'm an American, and always will be. I happen to love that big, awkward, sprawling country very much — and its big, awkward, sprawling people. Anyway, I don't like politics; and I don't make "political gestures," as you call it. I don't even believe in politics. To me, politics is like one of those annoying, and potentially dangerous (but generally just painful) chronic diseases that you just have to put up with in your life if you happen to have contracted it. Politics is like having diabetes. It's a science, a catch-as-catch-can science, which has grown up out of simple animal necessity more than anything else. If I were twice as big as I am, and twice as physically strong, I think I'd be a total anarchist. As it is, since I'm physically a pretty little guy... no, in fact, one reason I left was because I believe it is good for an American writer to get outside his country — outside his continent — and see it from a vantage point outside its pervading emotional climate.
“My ignorance wasn’t just annoying. It was dangerous.”
Source: Fledgling (2005), Chapter 13 (p. 126)
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Octavia E. Butler 107
American science fiction writer 1947–2006Related quotes
“It is not the insurrections of ignorance that are dangerous, but the revolts of intelligence.”
Democracy and Other Addresses (1886)
Source: Women (1978)
Context: I was glad I wasn't in love, that I wasn't happy with the world. I like being at odds with everything. People in love often become edgy, dangerous. They lose their sense of perspective. They lose their sense of humor. They become nervous, psychotic bores. They even become killers.
“the greatest danger is always the one we are ignorant of.”
Source: Fool's Fate
“Beware of false knowledge; it is more dangerous than ignorance.”
“Nothing is as dangerous as an ignorant friend; a wise enemy is to be preferred.”
Rien n'est si dangereux qu'un ignorant ami;
Mieux vaudrait un sage ennemi.
Book VIII (1678-1679), fable 10.
Fables (1668–1679)
Variant: Nothing is more dangerous than a friend without discretion; even a prudent enemy is preferable.
“When ignorance and bigotry is allied with power, it is a dangerous force.”
2018
Source: [Cory Booker blasts Republicans for amnesia over Trump's 'shithole' remark, https://www.theguardian.com/us-news/2018/jan/17/cory-booker-blasts-republicans-for-amnesia-over-trumps-shithole-remark, The Guardian, Associated Press, 2019-03-11, 2018-01-17]
Source: [Booker to Nielsen: Your Silence is Complicity, https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=BJeYvCZUDu0, Associated Press Archive, YouTube, 2018-01-21, 2019-03-11]
“Nothing in the world is more dangerous than sincere ignorance and conscientious stupidity.”
Source: 1960s, Strength to Love (1963), Ch. 4 : Love in action, Sct. 3
“The one thing that is more dangerous than true ignorance is the illusion of understanding.”
Source: Life, Sex, and Ideas: The Good Life Without God (2002), Chapter 57, “Becoming Philosophical” (p. 226)