“Being ignorant is not so much a shame, as being unwilling to learn.”

“I said I liked being half-educated; you were so much more surprised at everything when you were ignorant.”

“3908. Poverty is not a Shame; but the being asham'd of it, is.”

“Mine has been a life of much shame. I can't even guess myself what it must be to live the life of a human being.”

“The shame of being a man - is there any better reason to write?”

“Shame derives its power from being unspeakable.”

“Mistakes and omissions are one thing to correct. We will not throw away the hard rice, as long as it is still edible. We can still turn it into fried rice. But ignorance is a different matter. Those who are ignorant and unwilling to learn can no longer be corrected.”

“The thrill of being ignored!”

“[T]he first philosophers, in investigating the truth and the nature of things, wandered, as if led by ignorance, into a certain… path. Hence, they say that no being is either generated or corrupted, because it is necessary that what is generated should be generated either from being or non-being: but both these are impossible; for neither can being be generated, since it already is; and from nothing, nothing can be generated… And thus… they said that there were not many things, but that being alone had a subsistence. …the ancient philosophers …through this ignorance added so much to their want of knowledge, as to fancy that nothing else was generated or had a being; but they subverted all generation.”

“There are so many ways of being wrong and so few ways of being right that it is much more economical to study successes.”