“The role of reason is not to make us wise but to reveal our ignorance”

Source: Antony and Cleopatra

Source: Little, Big

Essai sur la théorie de l'économie politique et de ses rapports avec la morale et le droit. (1867). Quoted by Teotonio R. de Souza in Indo-Portuguese history (1985), p. 210
Essai sur la théorie de l'économie politique et de ses rapports avec la morale et le droit (1867)

No. 15.
Maxims and Moral Sentences

Psychedelic Society (1984)
Context: What blinds us, or what makes historical progress very difficult, is our lack of awareness of our ignorance. And [I think] that beliefs should be put aside, and that a psychedelic society would abandon belief systems [in favor of] direct experience and this is, I think much, of the problem of the modern dilemma, is that direct experience has been discounted and in its place all kind of belief systems have been erected... If you believe something, you're automatically precluded from believing in the opposite, which means that a degree of your human freedom has been forfeited in the act of this belief.

Source: The Borrowers Afield

The Guardian, September 9, 2002 http://www.chomsky.info/articles/20020909.htm.
Quotes 2000s, 2002
Context: September 11 shocked many Americans into an awareness that they had better pay much closer attention to what the US government does in the world and how it is perceived. Many issues have been opened for discussion that were not on the agenda before. That's all to the good. It is also the merest sanity, if we hope to reduce the likelihood of future atrocities. It may be comforting to pretend that our enemies "hate our freedoms," as President Bush stated, but it is hardly wise to ignore the real world, which conveys different lessons. The president is not the first to ask: "Why do they hate us?" In a staff discussion 44 years ago, President Eisenhower described "the campaign of hatred against us [in the Arab world], not by the governments but by the people". His National Security Council outlined the basic reasons: the US supports corrupt and oppressive governments and is "opposing political or economic progress" because of its interest in controlling the oil resources of the region.... What they hate is official policies that deny them freedoms to which they aspire.