“Self-knowledge can be painful, but not half so damaging as self-ignorance.”

— Orson Scott Card , book Stone Tables

Stone Tables (1997)

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Orson Scott Card 586

American science fiction novelist 1951

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“Truth is harder to bear than ignorance, and so ignorance is valued more— also because the status quo depends on it; but love depends on self-knowledge and self-knowledge depends on being able to bear the truth.”

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“But for those in whom that ignorance of Self is by knowledge destroyed, their knowledge like the sun illumines That Supreme.”

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“No artist can develop without increasing his self-knowledge; but self-knowledge supposes a certain preoccupation with the meaning of human life and the destiny of man.”

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Source: The Strength To Dream (1961), p. 197
Context: No artist can develop without increasing his self-knowledge; but self-knowledge supposes a certain preoccupation with the meaning of human life and the destiny of man. A definite set of beliefs — Methodist Christianity, for example — may only be a hindrance to development; but it is not more so than Beckett's refusal to think at all. Shaw says somewhere that all intelligent men must be preoccupied with either religion, politics, or sex. (He seems to attribute T. E. Lawrence's tragedy to his refusal to come to grips with any of them.) It is hard to see how an artist could hope to achieve any degree of self-knowledge without being deeply concerned with at least one of the three.

“They say a little knowledge is a dangerous thing, but it's not one half so bad as a lot of ignorance.”

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“If man puts his honor first in relying upon himself, knowing himself and applying himself, this in self-reliance, self-assertion, and freedom, he then strives to rid himself of the ignorance which makes a strange impenetrable object a barrier and a hindrance to his self-knowledge.”

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Source: The False Principle of our Education (1842), p. 23

“Truly there is no cause for you to be miserable and unhappy. You yourself impose limitations on your true nature of infinite Being and then weep that you are but a finite creature. Then you take up this or that sadhana to transcend the nonexistent limitations. But if your sadhana itself assumes the existence of the limitations, how can it help you to transcend them? Hence I say know that you are really the infinite, pure Being, the Self Absolute. You are always that Self and nothing but that Self. Therefore, you can never be really ignorant of the Self; your ignorance is merely a formal ignorance… Know then that true Knowledge does not create a new Being for you; it only removes your "ignorant ignorance." Bliss is not added to your nature; it is merely revealed as your true and natural state, eternal and imperishable. The only way to be rid of your grief is to know and be the Self.”

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“Self-reverence, self-knowledge, self-control,
These three alone lead life to sovereign power.”

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Context: Self-reverence, self-knowledge, self-control,
These three alone lead life to sovereign power.
Yet not for power (power of herself
Would come uncall'd for) but to live by law,
Acting the law we live by without fear;
And, because right is right, to follow right
Were wisdom in the scorn of consequence.

“Only the descent into the hell of self-knowledge can pave the way to godliness.”

Immanuel Kant (1724–1804) German philosopher

[N]ur die Höllenfahrt des Selbsterkenntnisses bahnt den Weg zur Vergötterung ...
Ak 6:441
Metaphysics of Morals (1797)

“When the bubble of ignorance bursts the self realizes its oneness with the indivisible Self.”

Meher Baba (1894–1969) Indian mystic

65 : Ignorance Personified, p. 111.
The Everything and the Nothing (1963)
Context: When the bubble of ignorance bursts the self realizes its oneness with the indivisible Self.
Words that proceed from the Source of Truth have real meaning. But when men speakthese words as their own, the words become meaningless.

“Self-knowledge can be painful, but not half so damaging as self-ignorance.”

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