Quotes about ignorance

page 7

Source: After You'd Gone

Source: Portrait in Sepia

Source: Zen in the Art of Writing

Source: Naomi and Ely's No Kiss List

Nationally syndicated column number 90, From Nuts To The Soup (31 August 1924); published in The New York Times http://select.nytimes.com/gst/abstract.html?res=F50A12F83D551B7A93C3AA1783D85F408285F9
Weekly columns
Variant: Everybody is ignorant, only on different subjects.

Source: Wind from the Stars

Source: The Book of Imaginary Beings

Source: Even Vampires Get the Blues

Source: My Family and Other Animals (1956)

1940s–present, A Mencken Chrestomathy (1949)

Annie on My Mind

Source: The Phantom Tollbooth

Source: Gone Girl

Source: Every Day

Source: A Theory of Justice (1971; 1975; 1999), Chapter I, Section 3, pg. 12

Source: And the Mountains Echoed

Source: Lovingkindness: The Revolutionary Art of Happiness

Source: Invisible Man

Source: The Duke and I

Source: Revival

Source: Death by Black Hole - And Other Cosmic Quandaries

Source: This Lullaby

Source: The Lost Symbol

Source: Why Not Me?

Source: Reviewing Blueprints: Solving the Mystery of Evolution (1989) by Maitland A. Edey and Donald C. Johanson

Source: Last sentence expanded upon in "Ignorance is No Crime" (2001) (see below)
Context: So to the book's provocation, the statement that nearly half the people in the United States don't believe in evolution. Not just any people but powerful people, people who should know better, people with too much influence over educational policy. We are not talking about Darwin's particular theory of natural selection. It is still (just) possible for a biologist to doubt its importance, and a few claim to. No, we are here talking about the fact of evolution itself, a fact that is proved utterly beyond reasonable doubt. To claim equal time for creation science in biology classes is about as sensible as to claim equal time for the flat-earth theory in astronomy classes. Or, as someone has pointed out, you might as well claim equal time in sex education classes for the stork theory. It is absolutely safe to say that if you meet somebody who claims not to believe in evolution, that person is ignorant, stupid or insane (or wicked, but I'd rather not consider that).

If that gives you offence, I'm sorry. You are probably not stupid, insane or wicked; and ignorance is no crime in a country with strong local traditions of interference in the freedom of biology educators to teach the central theorem of their subject.

Source: Daniel Deronda

Source: Artemis Fowl (2001)

Source: Mary Queen of Scotland and The Isles

Source: Reborn: Journals and Notebooks, 1947-1963

Source: The Amulet of Samarkand

Source: God Help the Child

Source: Benny and Babe

Source: The Last Guardian

Source: Every Day

2010s
Context: Does it mean, if you don’t understand something, and the community of physicists don’t understand it, that means God did it? Is that how you want to play this game? Because if it is, here’s a list of things in the past that the physicists at the time didn’t understand [and now we do understand] [... ]. If that’s how you want to invoke your evidence for God, then God is an ever-receding pocket of scientific ignorance that’s getting smaller and smaller and smaller as time moves on - so just be ready for that to happen, if that’s how you want to come at the problem.

Source: The Waste Lands

Source: Fool's Assassin

Source: Lady Midnight

Source: The Absolutely True Diary of a Part-Time Indian

Speech at the International Conference on Financing for Development (March 2002) http://www.cuba.cu/gobierno/discursos/2002/ing/f210302i.html

Source: Two Boys Kissing

Source: Succubus Shadows

Source: Ways of Seeing

Source: Anna Karenina

Source: Curse of the Bane

The Devil's Dictionary (1911)
Source: The Unabridged Devil's Dictionary

"What I Believe" in The Forum 84 (September 1930), p. 139; some of these expressions were also used separately in other Mencken essays.
1930s
Context: I believe that religion, generally speaking, has been a curse to mankind — that its modest and greatly overestimated services on the ethical side have been more than overcome by the damage it has done to clear and honest thinking.
I believe that no discovery of fact, however trivial, can be wholly useless to the race, and that no trumpeting of falsehood, however virtuous in intent, can be anything but vicious.
I believe that all government is evil, in that all government must necessarily make war upon liberty and the democratic form is as bad as any of the other forms.
I believe that the evidence for immortality is no better than the evidence of witches, and deserves no more respect.
I believe in the complete freedom of thought and speech — alike for the humblest man and the mightiest, and in the utmost freedom of conduct that is consistent with living in organized society.
I believe in the capacity of man to conquer his world, and to find out what it is made of, and how it is run.
I believe in the reality of progress.
I —But the whole thing, after all, may be put very simply. I believe that it is better to tell the truth than to lie. I believe that it is better to be free than to be a slave. And I believe that it is better to know than be ignorant.

Quoted in A Living Architecture : Frank Lloyd Wright and Taliesin Architects (2000) by John Rattenbury
Context: Human beings can be beautiful. If they are not beautiful it is entirely their own fault. It is what they do to themselves that makes them ugly. The longer I live the more beautiful life becomes. If you foolishly ignore beauty, you will soon find yourself without it. Your life will be impoverished. But if you invest in beauty, it will remain with you all the days of your life.

Source: How to Suppress Women's Writing

Source: Gone Girl

Source: 1960s, Julian (1964), Chapter 1, Libanius to Priscus, Antioch March 380

Source: What Dreams May Come

Source: Silver Shadows

Source: Fooled by Randomness: The Hidden Role of Chance in Life and in the Markets

Source: The Opal Deception

Source: The Expression of the Emotions in Man and Animals

Source: Clockwork Prince

Source: Atonement

Source: God Don't Play

Source: The Book of Blood and Shadow

Source: I Can't Stay Long

1880s, Speech on the Anniversary of Emancipation (1886)
Context: I admit the charge, but deny that nature, race, or color has anything to do with the fact. Any other race, with the same antecedents and the same conditions, would show a similar thieving propensity. The American people have this lesson to learn, that where justice is denied, where poverty is enforced, where ignorance prevails, and where any one class is made to feel that society is an organized conspiracy to oppress, rob, and degrade them, neither persons nor property would be safe... While I hold now, as I held years ago, that the South is the natural home of the colored race, and that there must the destiny of that race be mainly worked out, I still believe that means can be and ought to be adopted, to assist in the emigration of such of their number as may wish to change their residence to parts of the country, where their civil and political rights are better protected than at present they can be at the South... The Republican party is not perfect; it is cautious even to the point of timidity; but it is the best friend we have.

Source: The Mysterious Affair at Styles

Source: Warbreaker

2000s, The End of Faith (2004)
Source: The End of Faith: Religion, Terror, and the Future of Reason

Source: City of Bones

Source: Northanger Abbey

Source: Silver Shadows

Source: Enchanted Glass

Source: Edge of Eternity

Anita
Source: Anita Blake: Vampire Hunter series, The Laughing Corpse (1994)

Variant: We lived, as usual by ignoring. Ignoring isn't the same as ignorance, you have to work at it.
Source: The Handmaid’s Tale (1985), Chapter 10 (p. 56)
Source: The Handmaid's Tale