Quotes about ignorance (2904 quotes, page 2)

“In our political argument abroad, we minimize Arab opposition to us. But let us not ignore the truth among ourselves.”

David Ben-Gurion (1886–1973) Israeli politician, Zionist leader, prime minister of Israel

Address at the Mapai Political Committee (7 June 1938) as quoted in .
Context: In our political argument abroad, we minimize Arab opposition to us. But let us not ignore the truth among ourselves. I insist on the truth, not out of respect for scientific but political realities. The acknowledgement of this truth leads to inevitable and serious conclusions regarding our work in Palestine… let us not build on the hope the terrorist gangs will get tired. If some get tired, others will replace them.
A people which fights against the usurpation of its land will not tire so easily... it is easier for them to continue the war and not get tired than it is for us... The Palestinian Arabs are not alone. The Syrians are coming to help. From our point of view, they are strangers; in the point of law they are foreigners; but to the Arabs, they are not foreigners at all … The centre of the war is in Palestine, but its dimensions are much wider. When we say that the Arabs are the aggressors and we defend ourselves — this is only half the truth. As regards our security and life we defend ourselves and our moral and physical position is not bad. We can face the gangs... and were we allowed to mobilize all our forces we would have no doubts about the outcome... But the fighting is only one aspect of the conflict which is in its essence a political one. And politically we are the aggressors and they defend themselves. Militarily, it is we who are on the defensive who have the upper hand but in the political sphere they are superior. The land, the villages, the mountains, the roads are in their hands. The country is theirs, because they inhabit it, whereas we want to come here and settle down, and in their view we want to take away from them their country, while we are still outside. They defend bases which are theirs, which is easier than conquering new bases... let us not think that the terror is a result of Hitler's or Mussolini's propaganda — this helps but the source of opposition is there among the Arabs.

Truth

“These are the enemies: poverty, ignorance, disease. They are the enemies and not our fellow man, not our neighbor. And these enemies too, poverty, disease and ignorance, we shall over, come.”

Lyndon B. Johnson (1908–1973) American politician, 36th president of the United States (in office from 1963 to 1969)

1960s, The American Promise (1965)
Context: For Negroes are not the only victims. How many white children have gone uneducated, how many white families have lived in stark poverty, how many white lives have been scarred by fear, because we have wasted our energy and our substance to maintain the barriers of hatred and terror? So I say to all of you here, and to all in the Nation tonight, that those who appeal to you to hold on to the past do so at the cost of denying you your future. This great, rich, restless country can offer opportunity and education and hope to all: black and white, North and South, sharecropper and city dweller. These are the enemies: poverty, ignorance, disease. They are the enemies and not our fellow man, not our neighbor. And these enemies too, poverty, disease and ignorance, we shall over, come.

Disease

“One must indeed be ignorant of the methods of genius to suppose that it allows itself to be cramped by forms.”

Napoleon I of France (1769–1821) French general, First Consul and later Emperor of the French

Napoleon : In His Own Words (1916)
Context: One must indeed be ignorant of the methods of genius to suppose that it allows itself to be cramped by forms. Forms are for mediocrity, and it is fortunate that mediocrity can act only according to routine. Ability takes its flight unhindered.

“The reason why all those we have mentioned hold false opinions and make impious or ignorant assertions about God appears to be nothing else but this, that scripture”

Origen (185–254) Christian scholar in Alexandria

“How divine scripture should be interpreted,” On First Principles, book 4, chapter 2, § 2, Readings in World Christian History (2013), p. 69
On First Principles
Context: The reason why all those we have mentioned hold false opinions and make impious or ignorant assertions about God appears to be nothing else but this, that scripture is not understood in its spiritual sense, but is interpreted according to the bare letter.

God , Appearance , Falseness

“Where there is charity and wisdom, there is neither fear nor ignorance.”

Francis of Assisi (1182–1226) Catholic saint and founder of the Franciscan Order

The Counsels of the Holy Father St. Francis, Admonition 27.
Context: Where there is charity and wisdom, there is neither fear nor ignorance. Where there is patience and humility, there is neither anger nor vexation. Where there is poverty and joy, there is neither greed nor avarice. Where there is peace and meditation, there is neither anxiety nor doubt.

Wisdom , Fear

“As time goes on and the horrors pile up, the mind seems to secrete a sort of self-protecting ignorance which needs a harder and harder shock to pierce it, just as the body will become immunised to a drug and require bigger and bigger doses.”

George Orwell (1903–1950) English author and journalist

"As I Please," The Tribune (17 January 1947)
"As I Please" (1943–1947)
Context: This business of making people conscious of what is happening outside their own small circle is one of the major problems of our time, and a new literary technique will have to be evolved to meet it. Considering that the people of this country are not having a very comfortable time, you can't perhaps, blame them for being somewhat callous about suffering elsewhere, but the remarkable thing is the extent to which they manage to be unaware of it. Tales of starvation, ruined cities, concentration camps, mass deportations, homeless refugees, persecuted Jews — all this is received with a sort of incurious surprise, as though such things had never been heard of but at the same time were not particularly interesting. The now-familiar photographs of skeleton-like children make very little impression. As time goes on and the horrors pile up, the mind seems to secrete a sort of self-protecting ignorance which needs a harder and harder shock to pierce it, just as the body will become immunised to a drug and require bigger and bigger doses.

Secret , Time

“Those designs are best which the enemy are entirely ignorant of till the moment of execution.”
Nulla consilia meliora sunt nisi illa, quae ignorauerit aduersarius, antequam facias.

Publius Flavius Vegetius Renatus book De re militari

De Re Militari (also Epitoma Rei Militaris), Book III, "Dispositions for Action"
Context: It is much better to overcome the enemy by famine, surprise or terror than by general actions, for in the latter instance fortune has often a greater share than valour. Those designs are best which the enemy are entirely ignorant of till the moment of execution. Opportunity in war is often more to be depended on than courage. (General Maxims)

“The evil that is in the world always comes of ignorance, and good intentions may do as much harm as malevolence, if they lack understanding.”

Albert Camus book The Plague

The Plague (1947)
Context: The evil that is in the world always comes of ignorance, and good intentions may do as much harm as malevolence, if they lack understanding. On the whole men are more good than bad; that, however, isn't the real point. But they are more or less ignorant, and it is this that we call vice or virtue; the most incorrigible vice being that of an ignorance which fancies it knows everything and therefore claims for itself the right to kill. There can be no true goodness, nor true love, without the utmost clear-sightedness.

World , Understanding , Evil

“The general consensus is that we gain wisdom and learn from our failures and mistakes; however, many do not accept the rationale of their errors and thus continually repeat them; therefore, when we do not acknowledge our missteps ignorance prevails.”

Gandolfo – (RJ Intindola)

1978

Wisdom , Error , Failure , Learning

“In fact, honour, duty and love of one’s own kith and kin and country might often compel us to disregard non-violence and to use force. I could never conceive that an armed resistance to an aggression is unjust. I would consider it a religious and moral duty to resist and, if possible, to overpower such an enemy by use of force. Rama killed Ravana in a tumultuous fight and relieved Sita.. Krishna killed Kansa to end his wickedness; and Arjuna had to fight and slay quite a number of his friends and relations including the revered Bhishma because the latter was on the side of the aggressor. It is my firm belief that in dubbing Rama, Krishna and Arjuna as guilty of violence, the Mahatma betrayed a total ignorance of the springs of human action. In more recent history, it was the heroic fight put up by Chhatrapati Shivaji that first checked and eventually destroyed the Muslim tyranny in India. It was absolutely essentially for Shivaji to overpower and kill an aggressive Afzal Khan, failing which he would have lost his own life. In condemning history’s towering warriors like Shivaji, Rana Pratap and Guru Gobind Singh as misguided patriots, Gandhiji has merely exposed his self-conceit.”

Nathuram Godse (1910–1949) Assassin of Mahatma Gandhi

Nathuram Godse: Why I Assassinated Gandhi (1993)

History , Country , Spring , Self-confidence

“The Logos, in truth, is the light of God, but the ignorant soul is darkness. On this account, if it continues solitary, it tends downward towards matter, and dies with the flesh; but, if it enters into union with the Divine Spirit, it is no longer helpless, but ascends to the regions whither the Spirit guides it: for the dwelling-place of the spirit is above, but the origin of the soul is from beneath. Now, in the beginning the spirit was a constant companion of the soul, but the spirit forsook it because it was not willing to follow.”

Tatian (120–180) Syrian writer

Source: Address to the Greeks, Chapter XIII

Light , Truth , God , Soul

“The greatest danger to our future is apathy. We cannot expect those living in poverty and ignorance to worry about saving the world. For those of us able to read this magazine, it is different. We can do something to preserve our planet.”

Jane Goodall (1934) British primatologist, ethologist, and anthropologist

"The Power of One", TIME Magazine (26 August 2002) http://content.time.com/time/magazine/article/0,9171,1003125,00.html

World , Future , Reading

“The pursuit of success is marked by numerous characteristics; including, perseverance, commitment, education, and wisdom, to name a few. The road to failure can also be described with countless personality traits, including, unreliable, indolence, ignorance, and ineptitude.
However, during my thirty years as an administrator I have witnessed the most significant rationale for failure that cannot be described in a single word. It is a characteristic some people possess, often referred to by psychologists as the, need-to-be-liked-syndrome. Unfortunately, for some, their existence is predicated upon pleasing others, and seeking approval and recognition. They have become an inmate or prisoner to the thoughts and opinions of others.
In other words, they lack self-value, and therefore must receive it from others. When you do not value yourself, then it will be difficult to obtain joy and contentment in one’s life. Remember; you have worth and value.”

Gandolfo – (RJ Intindola)

1997

Success , Personality , People , Failure

“Duality is ignorance, non-duality is knowledge.”

Swami Samarpanananda Monk, Author, Teacher

Living Hinduism ( Page 87 )

Knowledge

“True friendship can afford true knowledge. It does not depend on darkness and ignorance.”

Henry David Thoreau (1817–1862) 1817-1862 American poet, essayist, naturalist, and abolitionist

Friendship , Dependency , Knowledge , Friendship

“The unproductiveness of the worldview of society can be overcome only by its victory over own ignorance.”

Zafar Mirzo (1972)

Victory

“There are no rules. That is how art is born, how breakthroughs happen. Go against the rules or ignore the rules. That is what invention is about.”

Helen Frankenthaler (1928–2011) American artist

Art

“His ignorance seemed to widen with everything he read.”

V.S. Naipaul book Half a Life

Source: Half a Life

Reading

“That was the rule that you never mixed up troubles at home with life at school. When parents were poor or ignorant or mean, or even just didn't believe in having a TV set, it was up to their kids to protect them.”

Katherine Paterson book Bridge to Terabithia

Source: Bridge to Terabithia

Life , School , Home , Parent

“Absurdity is what I like most in life, and there's humor in struggling in ignorance. If you saw a man repeatedly running into a wall until he was a bloody pulp, after a while it would make you laugh because it becomes absurd.”

David Lynch (1946) American filmmaker, television director, visual artist, musician and occasional actor

Life

“I'd take the awe of understanding over the awe of ignorance any day.”

Douglas Adams book The Salmon of Doubt

Source: The Salmon of Doubt (2002)

Understanding

“Until recently each generation found it more expedient to plead guilty to the charge of being young and ignorant, easier to take the punishment meted out by the older generation (which had itself confessed to the same crime short years before). The command to grow up at once was more bearable than the faceless horror of wavering purpose, which was youth.”

Maya Angelou book I Know Why the Caged Bird Sings

Source: I Know Why the Caged Bird Sings

Youth

“Reality is one of the possibilities I cannot afford to ignore”

Leonard Cohen book Beautiful Losers

Source: Beautiful Losers

Reality

“Just be ordinary and nothing special. Eat your food, move your bowels, pass water, and when you're tired, go and lie down. The ignorant will laugh at me, but the wise will understand.”

Bruce Lee book Tao of Jeet Kune Do

Variant: In Buddhism, there is no place for using effort. Just be ordinary and nothing special. Eat your food, move your bowels, pass water and when you're tired go and lie down. The ignorant will laugh at me, but the wise will understand.
Source: Tao of Jeet Kune Do

Lie , Food , Understanding , Water

“His ignorance is encyclopedic.”

Abba Eban (1915–2002) Israeli diplomat and politician

“Knowing your own ignorance is the first step to enlightenment.”

Patrick Rothfuss book The Wise Man's Fear

Source: The Wise Man's Fear

“Well, what we know
Is not what they tell us
We're not ignorant, I mean it,
And they just cannot touch us
Through the powers of the Most-High
We keep on surfacin'
Thru the powers of the Most-High
We keep on survivin'.”

Bob Marley (1945–1981) Jamaican singer, songwriter, musician

“When someone refuses to tell me a certain piece of information, it only makes me that much more determined to find out the truth. I hate being ignorant. For me, a question unanswered is like a thorn in my side”

Christopher Paolini book Brisingr

Source: Brisingr

Hate , Truth , Question

“I say there is no darkness but ignorance.”

William Shakespeare Twelfth Night

Source: Twelfth Night

“Censorship is the child of fear and the father of ignorance.”

Laurie Halse Anderson Speak

Source: Speak

Fear

“Man has, since the Enlightenment, dealt with things he should have ignored.”

Andrei Tarkovsky (1932–1986) Soviet and Russian film-maker, writer, film editor, film theorist, theatre and opera director

“If you want someone to be ignored, then build a life-size bronze statue of them and stick it in the middle of town…”

Banksy pseudonymous England-based graffiti artist, political activist, and painter

Source: Wall and Piece (2005)

Life

“We, ignorant of ourselves,
Beg often our own harms, which the wise powers
Deny us for our good; so find we profit
By losing of our prayers.”

William Shakespeare Antony and Cleopatra

Source: Antony and Cleopatra

“Admission of ignorance is often the first step in our education.”

Stephen R. Covey book The Seven Habits of Highly Effective People

Source: The 7 Habits of Highly Effective People: Powerful Lessons in Personal Change

Education

“After you've seen behind the facade of a stage set you can't take the play seriously any more. You can't go backwards and regain your ignorance; you have to move forward.”

Zeena Schreck (1963) Tantric Buddhist/Sethian

“He was distinguished for ignorance; for he had only one idea, and that was wrong.”

Benjamin Disraeli (1804–1881) British Conservative politician, writer, aristocrat and Prime Minister

Idea

“Herein lies the tragedy of the age: not that men are poor, — all men know something of poverty; not that men are wicked, — who is good? not that men are ignorant, — what is Truth? Nay, but that men know so little of men.”

W.E.B. Du Bois book The Souls of Black Folk

Source: The Souls of Black Folk (1903), Ch. XII: Of Alexander Crummell

Men , Truth , Age

“Wisdom tends to grow in proportion to one's awareness of one's ignorance.”

Anthony de Mello (1931–1987) Indian writer

Wisdom
Source: One Minute Wisdom (1989)

Wisdom

“It has become almost a cliché to remark that nobody boasts of ignorance of literature, but it is socially acceptable to boast ignorance of science and proudly claim incompetence in mathematics.”

Richard Dawkins (1941) English ethologist, evolutionary biologist and author

The Richard Dimbleby Lecture: Science, Delusion and the Appetite for Wonder (1996)

Literature , Mathematics , Science

“To be shocked at how deeply rejection hurts is to ignore what acceptance involves. We must never allow our suffering to be compounded by suggestions that there is something odd in suffering so deeply. There would be something amiss if we didn't.”

Arthur Schopenhauer (1788–1860) German philosopher

Suffering , Hurt

“The greatest enemy of knowledge is not ignorance, it is the illusion of knowledge.”

Daniel J. Boorstin (1914–2004) American historian

Knowledge

“He thought her beautiful, believed her impeccably wise; dreamed of her, wrote poems to her, which, ignoring the subject, she corrected in red ink.”

Virginia Woolf book Mrs Dalloway

Source: Mrs. Dalloway

Beauty , Dreams

“To be conscious that you are ignorant is a great step to knowledge.”

Benjamin Disraeli (1804–1881) British Conservative politician, writer, aristocrat and Prime Minister

Book 1, chapter 5.
Books, Coningsby (1844), Sybil (1845)
Variant: To be conscious that you are ignorant is a great step to knowledge.

Knowledge

“A learned fool is more foolish than an ignorant one.”

Molière Les Femmes Savantes

Un sot savant est sot plus qu'un sot ignorant.
Act IV, sc. iii
Les Femmes Savantes (1672)

Fools , Learning

“His progress through life was hampered by his tremendous sense of his own ignorance, a disability which affects all too few.”

Terry Pratchett book Maskerade

Source: Maskerade

Life , Sense

“I will not have my life narrowed down. I will not bow down to somebody else's whim or to someone else's ignorance.”

Bell Hooks (1952) American author, feminist, and social activist

Life

“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

“Fear and Bigotry are bred fom isolation and ignorance.
-Shekinah”

P. C. Cast book Untamed

Source: Untamed

Fear

“A great deal of intelligence can be invested in ignorance when the need for illusion is deep.”

Saul Bellow (1915–2005) Canadian-born American writer

Compare: It’s a point so blindingly obvious that only an extraordinarily clever and sophisticated person could fail to grasp it.
John Bercow, 2016.
General sources
Variant: There is no limit to the amount of intelligence invested in ignorance when the need for illusion runs deep.
Source: To Jerusalem and Back: A Personal Account (1976), p. 127

Intelligence

“You can transmute love, ignore it, muddle it, but you can never pull it out of you. I know from experience that the poets are right: love is eternal.”

E.M. Forster book A Room with a View

Source: A Room with a View (1908), Ch. 19
Context: It isn’t possible to love and to part. You will wish that it was. You can transmute love, ignore it, muddle it, but you can never pull it out of you. I know from experience that the poets are right: love is eternal.

Love

“It was the living who ignored the strange and wonderful, because life was too full of the boring and mundane.”

Terry Pratchett book Reaper Man

Source: Reaper Man

Life

“You will love again the stranger who was your self.
Give wine. Give bread. Give back your heart
to itself, to the stranger who has loved you all your life, whom you ignored
for another, who knows you by heart.”

Derek Walcott (1930–2017) Saint Lucian–Trinidadian poet and playwright

"Love after Love"
Source: "A Far Cry from Africa" (1962), Collected Poems, 1948-1984 (1986)

Love , Life , Wine , Heart

“Children aren't happy with nothing to ignore,
And that's what parents were created for.”

Ogden Nash (1902–1971) American poet

"The Parent"; paraphrased variants:
Children aren't happy without something to ignore, and that's what parents were created for.
Parents were invented to make children happy by giving them something to ignore.
Happy Days (1933)

Children , Parent , Happiness

“Life,” said Marvin dolefully, “loathe it or ignore it, you can’t like it.”

Douglas Adams The Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy pentalogy

Source: The Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy

Life

“Education is a system of imposed ignorance.”

Noam Chomsky book Manufacturing Consent: The Political Economy of the Mass Media

Source: Manufacturing Consent: The Political Economy of the Mass Media

Education

“Tragic heroes always moan when the gods take an interest in them, but it's the people the gods ignore who get the really tough deals.”

Terry Pratchett book Mort

Source: Mort

God , People

“We all should rise, above the clouds of ignorance, narrowness, and selfishness.”

Booker T. Washington (1856–1915) African-American educator, author, orator, and advisor

Source: The Story of My Life and Work

Selfishness

“It isn't so much that liberals are ignorant. It's just that they know so many things that aren't so.”

Ronald Reagan (1911–2004) American politician, 40th president of the United States (in office from 1981 to 1989)

1960s, A Time for Choosing (1964)
Variant: The trouble with our liberal friends is not that they are ignorant, but that they know so much that isn't so.

“We have a large public that is very ignorant about world affairs and very susceptible to simplistic slogans by candidates who appear out of nowhere, have no track record, but mouth appealing slogans.”

Zbigniew Brzeziński (1928–2017) Polish-American political scientist

Morning Joe (July 13, 2011).

World , Appearance

“Young man, the games we play are lessons we learn. The assumptions we make, things we ignore, and things we change make us what we become.”

Terry Pratchett book Dodger

Source: Dodger

Game , Learning , Change

“The only sin in the world is ignorance.”

Henry David Thoreau (1817–1862) 1817-1862 American poet, essayist, naturalist, and abolitionist

World

“But when a woman decides to sleep with a man, there is no wall she will not scale, no fortress she will not destroy, no moral consideration she will not ignore at its very root: there is no God worth worrying about.”

Gabriel García Márquez book Love in the Time of Cholera

Source: Love in the Time of Cholera

God , Sleep

“Ignorance is not innocence but sin.”

Robert Browning (1812–1889) English poet and playwright of the Victorian Era

“Don't squander the gold of your days, listening to the tedious, trying to improve the hopeless failure, or giving away your life to the ignorant, the common, and the vulgar”

Oscar Wilde (1854–1900) Irish writer and poet

Source: The Picture Of Dorian Gray

Life , Failure

“In order to eat, you have to be hungry. In order to learn, you have to be ignorant. Ignorance is a condition of learning. Pain is a condition of health. Passion is a condition of thought. Death is a condition of life.”

Robert Anton Wilson (1932–2007) American author and polymath

Source: Leviathan

Life , Death , Pain , Health

“The Universe, as has been observed before, is an unsettlingly big place, a fact which for the sake of a quiet life most people tend to ignore.”

Douglas Adams (1952–2001) English writer and humorist

Life , People , Universe

“These are the two fundamental ways in which the spiritual journey can be approached: you can either go slowly, step-by-step, accepting all natural assistance available to you, or you can ignore all the steps and take the inward leap.”

Sadhguru book Inner Engineering: A Yogi's Guide to Joy

Source: Inner Engineering: A Yogi's Guide to Joy

Way , Nature

“I see, these books are probably law books, and it is an essential part of the justice dispensed here that you should be condemned not only in innocence but also in ignorance.”

Franz Kafka book The Trial

Source: The Trial

Books , Justice , Law , Parting

“It is well known that a vital ingredient of success is not knowing that what you're attempting can't be done. A person ignorant of the possibility of failure can be a half-brick in the path of the bicycle of history.”

Terry Pratchett book Equal Rites

Source: Equal Rites

History , Failure , Success , Personality

“If you hide your ignorance, no one will hit you, and you'll never learn.”

Ray Bradbury book Fahrenheit 451

Source: Fahrenheit 451 (1953)

Learning

“Ignorance is curable, stupid is forever.”

Robert A. Heinlein (1907–1988) American science fiction author

Stupidity

“Close beside my knowledge lies my black ignorance.”

Friedrich Nietzsche book Thus Spoke Zarathustra

Source: Thus Spoke Zarathustra

Knowledge

“I understand what you're saying, and your comments are valuable, but I'm gonna ignore your advice.”

Roald Dahl (1916–1990) British novelist, short story writer, poet, fighter pilot and screenwriter

Source: Fantastic Mr. Fox

Understanding

“Confusion is a good state to be in. It means you are looking, constantly looking. People ask me, "Why do you confuse us like this?" I want you to understand, if you can be confused by anybody, it means you do not know. If you are fanatical, you cannot be confused. Or if you are realized, you cannot be confused. Between ignorance and enlightenment is a very thin line. But they are worlds apart.”

Sadhguru (1957) Yogi, mystic, visionary and humanitarian

Source: Of Mystics & Mistakes

People , World , Understanding

“Weariness that wants to reach the ultimate with one leap, with one fatal leap, a poor ignorant weariness that does not want to want any more: this created all gods and afterworlds.”

Friedrich Nietzsche book Thus Spoke Zarathustra

Source: Thus Spoke Zarathustra

God

“The four lesser apocalyptical horsemen of Panic, Bewilderment, Ignorance, and Shouting took control of the room”

Terry Pratchett book Monstrous Regiment

Source: Monstrous Regiment

“We live on an island surrounded by a sea of ignorance. As our island of knowledge grows, so does the shore of our ignorance.”

John Archibald Wheeler (1911–2008) American physicist

Scientific American (1992), Vol. 267.

Knowledge , Sea

“Granny sighed. "You have learned something," she said, and thought it safe to insert a touch of sternness into her voice. "They say a little knowledge is a dangerous thing, but it is not one half so bad as a lot of ignorance.”

Terry Pratchett book Equal Rites

Source: Equal Rites

Knowledge , Learning

“The most merciful thing in the world, I think, is the inability of the human mind to correlate all its contents. We live on a placid island of ignorance in the midst of black seas of the infinity, and it was not meant that we should voyage far.”

H.P. Lovecraft book The Call of Cthulhu and Other Weird Stories

Source: The Call of Cthulhu and Other Weird Stories

World , Thinking , Sea

“But then, in his lifetime, Halt had often ignored what was technically legal. Technicalities didn't appeal to him. All too often, they simply got in the way of doing the right thing.”

John Flanagan (1873–1938) Irish-American hammer thrower

Source: The Lost Stories

Way

“Was I ignorant, then, when I was seventeen? I think not. I knew everything. A quarter-century's experience of life since then has added nothing to what I knew. The one difference is that at seventeen I had no 'realism'.”

Yukio Mishima book Sun and Steel

Source: Sun and Steel

Life , Thinking

“I stifled a sigh and ignored the Imprinted Drunk Vision Girl.”

P. C. Cast book Hunted

Source: Hunted

Girl

“Time after time, history demonstrates that when people don't want to believe something, they have enormous skills of ignoring it altogether.”

Jim Butcher Dead Beat

Source: Dead Beat

People , History , Time

“Ignorance breeds fear and hatred.”

Kristin Cast book Betrayed

Source: Betrayed

Fear

“If you reject the food, ignore the customs, fear the religion and avoid the people, you might better stay home.”

James A. Michener (1907–1997) American author

As quoted in Good Advice (1982) by William Safire and Leonard Safir. Original appearance in Holiday magazine, March 1956, pp. 40-51.

People , Fear , Religion , Food

“All you need in this life is ignorance and confidence, and then Success is sure.”

Mark Twain (1835–1910) American author and humorist

Mark Twain's Notebook, 1887
Letter to Cordelia Welsh Foote (Cincinnati), 2 December 1887. Letter reprinted http://www.twainquotes.com/Success.html in Benjamin De Casseres's When Huck Finn Went Highbrow https://www.worldcat.org/title/when-huck-finn-went-highbrow/oclc/2514292 (1934)

For Team , Wise , Deep , Success

“Right is right, and wrong is wrong, and a body ain’t got no business doing wrong when he ain’t ignorant and knows better.”

Mark Twain book Adventures of Huckleberry Finn

Source: The Adventures of Huckleberry Finn

Business

“She was already learning that if you ignore the rules people will, half the time, quietly rewrite them so that they don't apply to you.”

Terry Pratchett book Equal Rites

Source: Equal Rites

People , Learning , Time

“It is only necessary to make war with five things; with the maladies of the body, the ignorances of the mind, with the passions of the body, with the seditions of the city and the discords of families.”

Pythagoras (-585–-495 BC) ancient Greek mathematician and philosopher

As quoted in The Biblical Museum: A Collection of Notes Explanatory, Homiletic, and Illustrative on the Holy Scriptures, Especially Designed for the Use of Ministers, Bible-students, and Sunday-school Teachers (1873) http://books.google.com/books?id=aJ8CAAAAQAAJ&pg=RA1-PA331&dq=%22only+necessary+to+make+war+with+five+things%22&ei=8jG1SZKiIIGklQTL0KHHDg by James Comper Gray, Vol. V

War , Family , Passion

“Facts do not cease to exist because they are ignored.”

Aldous Huxley (1894–1963) English writer

"Note on Dogma"
Proper Studies (1927)
Source: Complete Essays 2, 1926-29

“Blinding ignorance does mislead us. O! Wretched mortals, open your eyes!”

Leonardo Da Vinci (1452–1519) Italian Renaissance polymath

The Notebooks of Leonardo da Vinci (1883), XIX Philosophical Maxims. Morals. Polemics and Speculations.
Context: Blind ignorance misleads us thus and delights with the results of lascivious joys. Because it does not know the true light. Because it does not know what is the true light. Vain splendour takes from us the power of being.... behold! for its vain splendour we go into the fire, thus blind ignorance does mislead us. That is, blind ignorance so misleads us that... O! wretched mortals, open your eyes.

“When God puts love and compassion in your heart toward someone, He’s offering you an opportunity to make a difference in that person’s life. You must learn to follow that love. Don’t ignore it. Act on it. Somebody needs what you have.”

Joel Osteen (1963) American televangelist and author

Source: Your Best Life Now: 7 Steps to Living at Your Full Potential

Love , Life , God , Learning

“In such business
Action is eloquence, and the eyes of th’ ignorant
More learned than the ears.”

William Shakespeare (1564–1616) English playwright and poet

Business , Learning

“How clever you are, to know something of which you are ignorant.”

Jane Austen book Pride and Prejudice

Source: Pride and Prejudice

“Either the United States will destroy ignorance or ignorance will destroy the United States.”

W.E.B. Du Bois (1868–1963) American sociologist, historian, activist and writer

"Niagara Movement Speech" (1905) http://teachingamericanhistory.org/library/document/niagara-movement-speech/ 
Context: The school system in the country districts of the South is a disgrace and in few towns and cities are Negro schools what they ought to be. We want the national government to step in and wipe out illiteracy in the South. Either the United States will destroy ignorance or ignorance will destroy the United States.
And when we call for education we mean real education. We believe in work. We ourselves are workers, but work is not necessarily education. Education is the development of power and ideal. We want our children trained as intelligent human beings should be, and we will fight for all time against any proposal to educate black boys and girls simply as servants and underlings, or simply for the use of other people. They have a right to know, to think, to aspire.
These are some of the chief things which we want. How shall we get them? By voting where we may vote, by persistent, unceasing agitation; by hammering at the truth, by sacrifice and work.
We do not believe in violence, neither in the despised violence of the raid nor the lauded violence of the soldier, nor the barbarous violence of the mob, but we do believe in John Brown, in that incarnate spirit of justice, that hatred of a lie, that willingness to sacrifice money, reputation, and life itself on the altar of right. And here on the scene of John Brown’s martyrdom we reconsecrate ourselves, our honor, our property to the final emancipation of the race which John Brown died to make free.
Our enemies, triumphant for the present, are fighting the stars in their courses. Justice and humanity must prevail.

“Ignorance is like a delicate exotic fruit; touch it and the bloom is gone.”

Oscar Wilde (1854–1900) Irish writer and poet

Lady Bracknell, Act I.
The Importance of Being Earnest (1895)
Source: The Importance of Being Earnest and Other Plays
Context: I do not approve of anything that tampers with natural ignorance. Ignorance is like a delicate exotic fruit; touch it and the bloom is gone.

“The ignorance of one voter in a democracy impairs the security of all.”

John F. Kennedy (1917–1963) 35th president of the United States of America

Democracy

“Ignorant people think it is the noise which fighting cats make that is so aggravating, but it ain't so; it is the sickening grammar that they use.”

Mark Twain book A Tramp Abroad

A Tramp Abroad (1880)
Context: You may say a cat uses good grammar. Well, a cat does -- but you let a cat get excited once; you let a cat get to pulling fur with another cat on a shed, nights, and you'll hear grammar that will give you the lockjaw. Ignorant people think it's the noise which fighting cats make that is so aggravating, but it ain't so; it's the sickening grammar they use.

People , Cats , Thinking , Fight

“Where knowledge is a duty, ignorance is a crime.”

Thomas Paine (1737–1809) English and American political activist

"Public Good" (December 1780) http://www.thomas-paine-friends.org/paine-thomas_public-good-1780.html.
1780s

Knowledge

“If […] the ability to tell right from wrong should turn out to have anything to do with the ability to think, then we must be able to "demand" its exercise from every sane person, no matter how erudite or ignorant, intelligent or stupid, he may happen to be. Kant—in this respect almost alone among the philosophers—was much bothered by the common opinion that philosophy is only for the few, precisely because of its moral implications.”

Hannah Arendt book The Life of the Mind

Source: The Life of the Mind (1971/1978), p. 13.

Stupidity , Exercises , Intelligence , Thinking

Quotes about ignorance page 2

Quotes about ignorance
page 2