„Beware of false knowledge; it is more dangerous than ignorance.“

— George Bernard Shaw

Last update June 25, 2021.

George Bernard Shaw411

Irish playwright 1856 - 1950

— Lloyd Alexander American children's writer 1924 - 2007

Source: The Arkadians

People, Knowledge, Evil, Change

„Nothing in the world is more dangerous than sincere ignorance and conscientious stupidity.“

— Martin Luther King, Jr. American clergyman, activist, and leader in the American Civil Rights Movement 1929 - 1968

Source: 1960s, Strength to Love (1963), Ch. 4 : Love in action, Sct. 3

Stupidity, World, Sincerity

„Beware: the Government Is Armed and Dangerous.“

— John Hospers American philosopher and politician 1918 - 2011

Source: The Libertarian Alternative, (1977), p. 12

„In friendship as well as love, ignorance very often contributes more to our happiness than knowledge.“

— François de La Rochefoucauld French author of maxims and memoirs 1613 - 1680

Friendship, Happiness, Knowledge, Love

„It is almost as difficult to make a man unlearn his errors as his knowledge. Mal-information is more hopeless than non-information; for error is always more busy than ignorance. Ignorance is a blank sheet, on which we may write; but error is a scribbled one, on which we must first erase. Ignorance is contented to stand still with her back to the truth; but error is more presumptuous, and proceeds in the same direction. Ignorance has no light, but error follows a false one. The consequence is, that error, when she retraces her footsteps, has further to go, before she can arrive at the truth, than ignorance.“

— Charles Caleb Colton British priest and writer 1777 - 1832

Vol. I; I
Lacon (1820)

Truth, Error, Business, Knowledge

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

— Terry Pratchett, book Equal Rites

Source: Equal Rites

Knowledge

„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.“

— Andrea Dworkin, book Intercourse

Source: Intercourse (1987), Chapter 4

Love, Truth, Knowledge, Dependency

„There is no method of reasoning more common, and yet none more blameable, than in philosophical debates to endeavour to refute any hypothesis by a pretext of its dangerous consequences to religion and morality. When any opinion leads us into absurdities, 'tis certainly false; but 'tis not certain an opinion is false, because 'tis of dangerous consequence.“

— David Hume, book A Treatise of Human Nature

Part 3, Section 2
A Treatise of Human Nature (1739-40), Book 2: Of the passions

Falseness, Religion

„Even as a youngster, though, I could not bring myself to believe that if knowledge presented danger, the solution was ignorance.“

— Isaac Asimov, book The Caves of Steel

Source: The Caves of Steel

Knowledge

„Beware not to use the future as an excuse to ignore living in the present.“

— Neil Harbisson Catalan-Irish musician, artist and activist 1984

As quoted in Serious Wonder (22 June 2015). "A conversation on cyborgism" http://www.seriouswonder.com/a-conversation-on-cyborgism-interview-with-u-k-cyborg-neil-harbisson/

Future

„Motto of the Institute: A little knowledge is a dangerous thing; a great deal of knowledge is disaster, which detractors of the Institute scornfully paraphrase to: Somebody else’s ignorance is bliss.“

— Jack Vance, Demon Princes

Source: Demon Princes (1964-1981), The Star King (1964), Chapter 8 (p. 83)

Knowledge

„I know a maiden fair to see,
Take care!
She can both false and friendly be,
Beware! Beware!
Trust her not,
She is fooling thee.“

— Henry Wadsworth Longfellow American poet 1807 - 1882

From the German (In Hyperion).
Bartlett's Familiar Quotations, 10th ed. (1919)

Fools, Falseness

„Unfortunately there was one thing that the white South feared more than Negro dishonesty, ignorance, and incompetency, and that was Negro honesty, knowledge, and efficiency.“

— W.E.B. Du Bois, book The Negro

Source: The Negro (1915), Ch. XI: The Negro in the United States

Fear, Knowledge

„I would far rather be ignorant than knowledgeable of evil.“

— Aeschylus, The Suppliants

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

Knowledge, Evil

„What can be more terrible than not to know whether one is alive or dead? “Justice” should insist that this knowledge or this ignorance should be the prerogative of every human being.“

— Lev Shestov Russian theologian 1866 - 1938

Source: In Job's Balances: on the sources of the eternal truths, The Conquest of the Self-Evident; Dostoievsky’s Philosophy p. 3

Justice, Dead, Knowledge

„Not ignorance, but ignorance of ignorance is the death of knowledge.“

— Alfred North Whitehead English mathematician and philosopher 1861 - 1947

Death, Knowledge

„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 English mathematician and biometrician 1857 - 1936

The Ethic of Freethought (Mar 6, 1883)

Imagination, Religion, Help, Knowledge

„Beware you be not swallowed up in books! An ounce of love is worth a pound of knowledge.“

— John Wesley Christian theologian 1703 - 1791

General sources
Source: Letter to Joseph Benson (7 November 1768); published in The Letters of John Wesley (1915) edited by George Eayrs

Love, Books, Knowledge

„False humility is more insulting than open pride!“

— Brandon Mull American fiction writer 1974

Source: Rise of the Evening Star

Falseness

„Nothing limits intelligence more than ignorance; nothing fosters ignorance more than one's own opinions; nothing strengthens opinions more than refusing to look at reality.“

— Sheri S. Tepper American fiction writer 1929 - 2016

Guardian Camwar, in Ch. 4 : the cooper
Source: The Visitor (2002)
Context: You asked for wisdom? Hear these words. Nothing limits intelligence more than ignorance; nothing fosters ignorance more than one's own opinions; nothing strengthens opinions more than refusing to look at reality.

Intelligence, Reality

„Beware of false knowledge; it is more dangerous than ignorance.“

George Bernard Shaw411

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