“Where knowledge is a duty, ignorance is a crime.”

—  Thomas Paine

"Public Good" (December 1780) http://www.thomas-paine-friends.org/paine-thomas_public-good-1780.html.
1780s

Adopted from Wikiquote. Last update Oct. 1, 2023. History

Help us to complete the source, original and additional information

Do you have more details about the quote "Where knowledge is a duty, ignorance is a crime." by Thomas Paine?
Thomas Paine photo
Thomas Paine 262
English and American political activist 1737–1809

Related quotes

Robert H. Jackson photo

“The duty to disclose knowledge of crime rests upon all citizens.”

Robert H. Jackson (1892–1954) American judge

Stein v. New York, 346 U.S. 156, 184 (1953)
Judicial opinions

John Morley, 1st Viscount Morley of Blackburn photo

“Where it is a duty to worship the sun it is pretty sure to be a crime to examine the laws of heat.”

John Morley, 1st Viscount Morley of Blackburn (1838–1923) British Liberal statesman, writer and newspaper editor

Voltaire http://books.google.com/books?id=bGFBAAAAYAAJ&q="Where+it+is+a+duty+to+worship+the+sun+it+is+pretty+sure+to+be+a+crime+to+examine+the+laws+of+heat"&pg=PA14#v=onepage (1871).

Edward Teller photo

“There is no case where ignorance should be preferred to knowledge — especially if the knowledge is terrible.”

Edward Teller (1908–2003) Hungarian-American nuclear physicist

As quoted in Forbidden Knowledge : From Prometheus to Pornography (1996) by Roger Shattuck, p. 177

Bram van Velde photo

“You are in an area where knowledge fails. Where you have to advance in ignorance, not even knowing where you are going.”

Bram van Velde (1895–1981) Dutch painter

1970's, Conversations with Samuel Beckett and Bram van Velde (1970 - 1972)

Gregory Palamas photo

“The summit of evil, the crime most natural to the devil, pride, was born of knowledge. But if this is so, how can it be possible that all the passions result from ignorance? Does knowledge purify the psyche? Paul says: Knowledge puffs up, but love builds up”

Gregory Palamas (1296–1359) Monk and archbishop

1 Corinthians 8:1
Source: Holy Hesychia: The Stillness that Knows God, p. 33

T.S. Eliot photo

“O perpetual revolution of configured stars,
O perpetual recurrence of determined seasons,
O world of spring and autumn, birth and dying!
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
Brings us farther from God and nearer to the Dust.”

T.S. Eliot (1888–1965) 20th century English author

Choruses from The Rock (1934)

Stephen Hawking photo

“The greatest enemy of knowledge is not ignorance. It is the illusion of knowledge.”

Stephen Hawking (1942–2018) British theoretical physicist, cosmologist, and author

Sometimes attributed to Hawking without a source, but originally from historian Daniel J. Boorstin. It appears in different forms in The Discoverers (1983), Cleopatra's Nose (1995), and introduction to The Decline and Fall of the Roman Empire (1995)
Misattributed

Karl Pearson photo

“The great danger... not content with our real knowledge of the relation of the finite to the infinite, they slur over our vast ignorance by the help of the imagination. Myth supplies the place of true knowledge where we are ignorant of the connection between finite and infinite. Hence... most concrete systems of religion present us with a certain amount of knowledge but a great deal of myth.”

Karl Pearson (1857–1936) English mathematician and biometrician

The Ethic of Freethought (Mar 6, 1883)

Related topics