Source: My Inventions (1919)
Context: He declared that it could not be done and did me the honor of delivering a lecture on the subject, at the conclusion he remarked, "Mr. Tesla may accomplish great things, but he certainly will never do this. It would be equivalent to converting a steadily pulling force, like that of gravity into a rotary effort. It is a perpetual motion scheme, an impossible idea." But instinct is something which transcends knowledge. We have, undoubtedly, certain finer fibers that enable us to perceive truths when logical deduction, or any other willful effort of the brain, is futile.
“Any attempt at willful ignorance would now be futile or worse; the only talisman against excessive knowledge that might have puissance would be more knowledge.”
Source: The Void Captain's Tale (1983), Chapter 6 (p. 66)
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Norman Spinrad 19
American science fiction writer and critic 1940Related quotes
“I would far rather be ignorant than knowledgeable of evil.”
Source: The Suppliants, line 453; comparable to "where ignorance is bliss, / 'Tis folly to be wise", Thomas Gray, On a Distant Prospect of Eton College, stanza 10
“I would be — for no knowledge is worth a straw —
Ignorant and wanton as the dawn.”
The Dawn http://poetry.poetryx.com/poems/1612/
The Wild Swans at Coole (1919)
Context: I would be ignorant as the dawn
That merely stood, rocking the glittering coach
Above the cloudy shoulders of the horses;
I would be — for no knowledge is worth a straw —
Ignorant and wanton as the dawn.
“The only good is knowledge, and the only evil is ignorance.”
The words of Socrates, as quoted by Diogenes Laertius.
Misattributed
More Steve Allen on the Bible, Religion, & Morality (1993)
“I shivered in the knowledge of the futility of all ambition.”
Part III : Study War
The Confessions of Nat Turner (1967)
Context: I shivered in the knowledge of the futility of all ambition. My mouth was sour with the yellow recollection of death and blood-smeared fields and walls. I watched the girl slip away, vanish without a hand laid upon her. Who knows but whether we were not doomed to lose. I know nothing any longer. Nothing. Did I really wish to vouchsafe a life for the one that I had taken?
29b [alternate translation]
Plato, Apology