A collection of quotes on the topic of ignorance, ignorant, people, use.
Source: https://www.peruinforma.com/entrevista-cultural-al-escritor-chileno-jose-baroja/
Source: https://www.peruinforma.com/entrevista-cultural-al-escritor-chileno-jose-baroja/
Fictional attribution in the movie The Emperor's Club (2002), given by Kevin Kline (as William Hundert); also attributed to Diogenes, without sources; no published occurrences of this statement prior to the movie have been located in any of the Aristophanes Plays or Fragments.
Misattributed
Source: IMDb, "Memorable quotes for The Emperor's Club" http://www.imdb.com/title/tt0283530/quotes, Internet Movie Database, www.imdb.com
Source: Two pages attributing it to Diogenes: http://www.prohibitionists.org/Background/Party_Platform/quickquotes/QQ-education.htm http://www.ryanbalton.com/funstuff/forb_seniorquotes.htm
“An ignorant doctor is the aide-de-camp of death.”
As quoted in Familiar Medical Quotations (1968) by Maurice B. Strauss
“Education is a progressive discovery of our own ignorance.”
Quoted in "Books: The Great Gadfly", Time magazine, 8 October 1965 (review of The Age of Voltaire by Will and Ariel Durant)
Context: Sixty years ago I knew everything. Now I know nothing. Education is a progressive discovery of our own ignorance.
Source: The Book of Disquiet
As quoted in "Atatürk" in Images of a Divided World (29 October 2006) http://jmilton6000.wordpress.com/2006/10/29/ataturk/
Variant translation: Humankind consists of two sexes, woman and man. Is it possible that a mass is improved by the improvement of only one part and the other ignored? Is it possible that if half of a mass is tied to earth with chains and the other half can soar into skies?
Context: Humankind is made up of two sexes, women and men. Is it possible for humankind to grow by the improvement of only one part while the other part is ignored? Is it possible that if half of a mass is tied to earth with chains that the other half can soar into skies?
“The worst thing a boy can do is ignore a girl when she's loving you with all her heart.”
https://www.goodreads.com/author/quotes/6422617.Liam_Payne
“Not ignorance, but ignorance of ignorance is the death of knowledge.”
“I have never met a man so ignorant that I could not learn something from him.”
As quoted in The Story of Civilization : The Age of Reason Begins, 1558-1648 (1935) by Will Durant, p. 605
Attributed
Variant: 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.
Source: The Call of Cthulhu
As quoted in Stories in His Own Hand: The Everyday Wisdom of Ronald Reagan (2001) https://books.google.com/books?id=9ut8fnmwVkwC&pg=PA91 edited by Kiron K. Skinner, Annelise Graebner Anderson, and Martin Anderson. p. 91
Post-presidency (1989–2004)
“Nothing in the world is more dangerous than sincere ignorance and conscientious stupidity.”
Source: 1960s, Strength to Love (1963), Ch. 4 : Love in action, Sct. 3
Muhammad Kulayni, Usūl al-Kāfī - The Book of Intellect and Ignorance.
Regarding Knowledge & Wisdom, General
1936 speeches to the Great Council of Chiefs
Akira Kurosawa 'Something Like an Autobiography (1981)
Something Like an Autobiography (1981)
Stobaeus, iv. 29a. 19
Quoted by Stobaeus
"London Letter" (December 1944), in Partisan Review (Winter 1945)
Variant translation: Slavery is the daughter of darkness; an ignorant people is the blind instrument of its own destruction; ambition and intrigue take advantage of the credulity and inexperience of men who have no political, economic or civil knowledge. They mistake pure illusion for reality, license for freedom, treason for patriotism, vengeance for justice.
As translated by Frederick H. Fornoff in El Libertador : Writings Of Simon Bolivar (2003) edited by David Bushnell
The Angostura Address (1819)
Context: We have been ruled more by deceit than by force, and we have been degraded more by vice than by superstition. Slavery is the daughter of darkness: an ignorant people is a blind instrument of its own destruction. Ambition and intrigue abuses the credulity and experience of men lacking all political, economic, and civic knowledge; they adopt pure illusion as reality; they take license for liberty, treachery for patriotism, and vengeance for justice. If a people, perverted by their training, succeed in achieving their liberty, they will soon lose it, for it would be of no avail to endeavor to explain to them that happiness consists in the practice of virtue; that the rule of law is more powerful than the rule of tyrants, because, as the laws are more inflexible, every one should submit to their beneficent austerity; that proper morals, and not force, are the bases of law; and that to practice justice is to practice liberty.
cited in: Morris Kline (1969) Mathematics and the physical world. p. 1
Opus Majus, c. 1267
Source: Thinking, Fast and Slow (2011), Chapter 19, "The illusion of understanding", page 201 (ISBN 9780141033570).
“Ignore the critics… Only mediocrity is safe from ridicule. Dare to be different!”
L'art n'est pas chaste [...], on devrait l’interdire aux ignorants innocents, ne jamais mettre en contact avec lui ceux qui y sont insuffisamment préparés. Oui, l'art est dangereux. Ou s'il est chaste, ce n'est pas de l'art.
Quote by Antonina Vallentin (1963 [1957]), Picasso, p. 168.
1960s
“Literature is the most agreeable way of ignoring life.”
A literatura é a maneira mais agradável de ignorar a vida.
Variant: To write is to forget. Literature is the pleasantest way of ignoring life.
Source: The Book of Disquietude, trans. Richard Zenith, text 116
“The magic of first love is our ignorance that it can ever end.”
Book 4, chapter 1. Often misquoted as "The magic of first love is our ignorance that it can never end".
Books, Coningsby (1844), Henrietta Temple (1837)
“Ignorance is a cure for nothing.”
“Ignorance never settles a question.”
Source: Speech in the House of Commons (14 May 1866)
“A generation which ignores history has no past —and no future.”
Source: Time Enough for Love (1973)
“If knowledge can create problems, it is not through ignorance that we can solve them.”
“To be ignorant of what occurred before you were born is to remain always a child. For what is the worth of human life, unless it is woven into the life of our ancestors by the records of history?”
Nescire autem quid ante quam natus sis acciderit, id est semper esse puerum. Quid enim est aetas hominis, nisi ea memoria rerum veterum cum superiorum aetate contexitur? ([http://www.thelatinlibrary.com/cicero/orator.shtml#120 120])
Variant translation: To be ignorant of the past is to be forever a child.
Chapter XXXIV, section 120
Orator Ad M. Brutum (46 BC)
Variant: Not to know what happened before you were born is to be a child forever. For what is the time of a man, except it be interwoven with that memory of ancient things of a superior age?
Los Angeles Magazine Vol. 44, No. 11 (November 1999), p. 169
Freedom of expression - Secular Theocracy Versus Liberal Democracy (1998)
“The ignorant (one) is the captive of his tongue.”
Misnad al-Imām al-Hādī, p. 304.
Regarding Knowledge & Wisdom, General
1936 speeches to the Great Council of Chiefs
Nahj al-Balagha
Werner Heisenberg as quoted in Quirks of the Quantum Mind, p. 175, ICRL Press, ISBN 1936033062
“There is only one good, knowledge, and one evil, ignorance.”
Socrates II: xxxi http://www.perseus.tufts.edu/hopper/text?doc=D.+L.+2.5.31&fromdoc=Perseus%3Atext%3A1999.01.0257#note-link14. Original Greek: ἓν μόνον ἀγαθὸν εἶναι, τὴν ἐπιστήμην, καὶ ἓν μόνον κακόν, τὴν ἀμαθίαν
Diogenes Laertius
Variant: The only good is knowledge and the only evil is ignorance.
Letter to Catherine L. Moore (7 February 1937), in Selected Letters V, 1934-1937 edited by August Derleth and Donald Wandrei, pp. 407-408
Non-Fiction, Letters
"The Problem of Increasing Human Energy", The Century (Jun 1900), 211. Collected in The Century (1900), Vol. 60, 211
“The only good is knowledge, and the only evil is ignorance.”
The words of Socrates, as quoted by Diogenes Laertius.
Misattributed
Not found in Twain's works, this was attributed to him in Reader's Digest (September 1939): no prior attribution known. Mark Twain’s father died when Twain was eleven years old.
Disputed
Variant: When I was a boy of fourteen, my father was so ignorant I could hardly stand to have the old man around. But when I got to be twenty-one, I was astonished at how much the old man had learned in seven years.
“Education: the path from cocky ignorance to miserable uncertainty.”
“Beware of false knowledge; it is more dangerous than ignorance.”
“The greater the ignorance the greater the dogmatism.”
Chauvinism in Medicine (1902), p. 696
The Critic as Artist (1891), Part I
Context: There is much to be said in favor of modern journalism. By giving us the opinions of the uneducated, it keeps us in touch with the ignorance of the community. By carefully chronicling the current events of contemporary life, it shows us of what very little importance such events really are. By invariably discussing the unnecessary, it makes us understand what things are requisite for culture, and what are not.
Context: Puritans cannot destroy a beautiful thing, yet, by means of their extraordinary prurience, they can almost taint beauty for a moment. It is chiefly, I regret to say, through journalism that such people find expression. I regret it because there is much to be said in favour of modern journalism. By giving us the opinions of the uneducated, it keeps us in touch with the ignorance of the community.
Context: It is chiefly, I regret to say, through journalism that such people find expression. I regret it because there is much to be said in favour of modern journalism. By giving us the opinions of the uneducated, it keeps us in touch with the ignorance of the community. By carefully chronicling the current events of contemporary life, it shows us of what very little importance such events really are. By invariably discussing the unnecessary, it makes us understand what things are requisite for culture, and what are not.
“But feelings can't be ignored, no matter how unjust or ungrateful they seem.”
Source: The Diary of a Young Girl
Source: The Treasure of the City of Ladies
“Reason obeys itself; and Ignorance submits to whatever is dictated to it.”
Part 1.7 Conclusion
1790s, Rights of Man, Part I (1791)
Context: Reason and Ignorance, the opposites of each other, influence the great bulk of mankind. If either of these can be rendered sufficiently extensive in a country, the machinery of Government goes easily on. Reason obeys itself; and Ignorance submits to whatever is dictated to it.
Is Truth Becoming Irrelevant to Conservatives? (December 5, 2016)
In Twitter (14 August 2017) https://twitter.com/notch/status/897158641962319878
In a letter to his son, Lucien; as quoted in: Brother Thomas (O.S.B.), Rosemary Williams (1999) Creation Out of Clay: The Ceramic Art and Writings of Brother Thomas. p. 45
undated quotes
Mekhlis in 1940. Quoted in The People Need a Tsar: The Emergence of National Bolshevism as Stalinist Ideology, 1931-1941, by D. L. Brandenberger & A. M. Dubrovsky, 1998
Source: A Soldier's Story (1951), p. x.
“I will not be ignored. I am here to stay.”
Quoted in Queer Quotes: On Coming Out and Culture, Love and Lust, Politics and Pride, and Much More, Teresa Theophano, ed. (2004)
Essays on Catholicism, Liberalism, and Socialism (1879)
“Ηe knew nothing except just the fact of his ignorance.”
Alternate translation: I know nothing except the fact of my ignorance.
II.32. Original Greek: εἰδέναι μὲν μηδὲν πλὴν αὐτὸ τοῦτο [εἰδέναι].
Diogenes Laertius
Michael Moore declares these lines in his film Fahrenheit 9/11 as something "Orwell once wrote". They are nearly identical to a block of voiceover in the 1984 Richard Burton/John Hurt movie version of 1984 when Winston (Hurt) is silently reading Goldstein's book. All of the lines are excerpts from various parts of Goldstein's book in part 2, chapter 9 of the novel with some paraphrasing. Note that the fourth sentence begins with "This new version". In Moore's speech there is no antecedent for this phrase; consequently, the sentence makes no sense there. https://docs.google.com/document/d/1SVrM2Ef81C7EUSTm4zsgjQk9mgMSeFUnlEvtleR2V1w/edit?usp=sharing http://metabunk.org/threads/debunked-war-is-not-meant-to-be-won-it-is-meant-to-be-continuous.1259/
Misattributed
“True ignorance is not the absence of knowledge, but the refusal to acquire it.”
As quoted by Mark Damazer in "In Our Time's Greatest Philosopher Vote" at In Our Time (BBC 4) http://www.bbc.co.uk/radio4/history/inourtime/greatest_philosopher_celeb.shtml
“Let's not be too rough on our own ignorance; it's what makes America great!”
A appearance on The Tonight Show (29 June 1988)
Variant: Let's not be too rough on our own ignorance, it's what makes America great!
“Man forgets. God forgives. Man forgets God's Truth. God forgives man's ignorance.”
Songs of the Soul (1971)
Norway attack suspect had anti-Muslim, pro-Israel views http://www.jpost.com/International/Article.aspx?id=230762/ Jerusalem Post (24 July 2011)
Other
What US leaders have never understood about Iran http://nypost.com/2015/07/19/what-us-leaders-have-never-understood-about-iran/, New York Post (July 19, 2015).
New York Post
“He said that there was one only good, namely, knowledge; and one only evil, namely, ignorance.”
Socrates, 14.
The Lives and Opinions of Eminent Philosophers (c. 200 A.D.), Book 2: Socrates, his predecessors and followers
“There is no pain worse than ignorance and lack of intelligence.”
Ibn Shu’ba al-Harrani, Tuhaf al-'Uqul, p. 165
"Sie wird das nothwendigste und härteste und die hauptsache in der Musique niemahlen bekommen, nämlich das tempo, weil sie sich vom jugend auf völlig befliessen hat, nicht auf den tact zu spiellen."
Letter to Leopold Mozart (24 October 1777), from Mozart: The Man and the Artist, as Revealed in his own Words by Friedrich Kerst, trans. Henry Edward Krehbiel (1906) http://www.gutenberg.org/dirs/etext03/wamma11.txt
“The ignorant man always adores what he cannot understand.”
Pt. III, ch. 3.
The Man of Genius (1891)
God and the State (1871; publ. 1882)
Source: Guide for the Perplexed (c. 1190), Part III, Ch.11
Quote of John Cage, in: 'The Future of Music: Credo' (1937); in: 'Silence: lectures and writings by Cage, John', Publisher Middletown, Conn. Wesleyan University Press, June 1961, V.
1930s
Referring to Enzo Ferrari, his rival in the sports car business. * Interview with Ferruccio Lamborghini
Thoroughbred & Classic Cars
1991
January 1991
http://web.archive.org/web/20041126032222/http://www.geocities.com/lamboguy/Intervu1.html
“Ignorance alone stands in the way of socialist success.”
The Socialist Party and the Working Class (1904)
Context: Ignorance alone stands in the way of socialist success. The capitalist parties understand this and use their resources to prevent the workers from seeing the light.
Intellectual darkness is essential to industrial slavery.
Congressional speech (1849)
Context: I affirm, in words as true and literal as any that belong to geometry, that the man who withholds knowledge from a child not only works diabolical miracles for the destruction of good, but for the creation of evil also. He who shuts out truth, by the same act opens the door to all the error that supplies its place. Ignorance breeds monsters to fill up all the vacuities of the soul that are unoccupied by the verities of knowledge. He who dethrones the idea of law, bids chaos welcome in its stead. Superstition is the mathematical complement of religious truth; and just so much less as the life of a human being is reclaimed to good, just so much more is it delivered over to evil. The man or the institution, therefore, that withholds knowledge from a child, or from a race of children, exercises the awful power of changing the world in which they are to live, just as much as though he should annihilate all that is most lovely and grand in this planet of ours, or transport the victim of his cruelty to some dark and frigid zone of the universe, where the sweets of knowledge are unknown, and the terrors of ignorance hold their undisputed and remorseless reign.
