ignorance

1.

A learned man is an idler who kills time with study. Beware of his false knowledge: it is more dangerous than ignorance.

- George Bernard Shaw

2.

The teacher who does not demand effort of his students does not educate - he merely extends ignorance to new subjects.

- Robert Brault

3.

Ignorance is the mother of admiration.

- George Chapman

4.

Discussion is an exchange of knowledge; argument an exchange of ignorance.

- Robert Quillen

5.

Suppose that we are wise enough to learn and know -- and yet not wise enough to control our learning and knowledge, so that we use it to destroy ourselves? Even if that is so, knowledge remains better than ignorance. It is better to know -- even if the knowledge endures only for the moment that comes before destruction -- than to gain eternal life at the price of a dull and swinish lack of comprehension of a universe that swirls unseen before us in all its wonder. That was the choice of Achilles, and it is mine, too.

- Asimov, Isaac

6.

It is better to hide ignorance, but it is hard to do this when we relax over wine.

- Heraclitus

7.

Theories that diseases are caused by mental states and can be cured by will power, are always an index of how much is not understood about the physical terrain of a disease.

- Susan Sontag

8.

The war is not meant to be won, it is meant to be continuous. Hierarchical society is only possible on the basis of poverty and ignorance. This new version is the past and no different past can ever have existed. In principle the war effort is always planned to keep society on the brink of starvation. The war is waged by the ruling group against its own subjects and its object is not the victory over either Eurasia or East Asia, but to keep the very structure of society intact.

- George Orwell

9.

Knowledge is the small part of ignorance that we arrange and classify.

- Bierce, Ambrose

10.

If ignorance is bliss, why aren't more people jumping up and down for joy.

11.

To believe in something not yet proved and to underwrite it with our lives: it is the only way we can leave the future open. Man, surrounded by facts, permitting himself no surmise, no intuitive flash, no great hypothesis, no risk, is in a locked cell. Ignorance cannot seal the mind and imagination more surely.

- Smith, Lillian

12.

Of a truth, Knowledge is power, but it is a power reined by scruple, having a conscience of what must be and what may be; whereas Ignorance is a blind giant who, let him but wax unbound, would make it a sport to seize the pillars that hold up the long-wrought fabric of human good, and turn all the places of joy as dark as a buried Babylon.

- Eliot, George

13.

There is nothing can pay one for that invaluable ignorance which is the companion of youth, those sanguine groundless hopes, and that lively vanity which makes all the happiness of life.

- Montagu, Lady Mary Wortley

14.

Ignorance is the first requisite of the historian -- ignorance, which simplifies and clarifies, which selects and omits, with a placid perfection unattainable by the highest art.

- Strachey, Lytton

15.

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.

- Wilde, Oscar

16.

A learned blockhead is a greater blockhead than an ignorant one.

- Franklin, Benjamin

17.

Selective ignorance, a cornerstone of child rearing. You don't put kids under surveillance: it might frighten you. Parents should sit tall in the saddle and look upon their troops with a noble and benevolent and extremely nearsighted gaze.

- Keillor, Garrison

18.

Innocence dwells with Wisdom, but never with Ignorance.

- William Blake

19.

Ignorance is the night of the mind, but a night without moon and star.

- Confucius

20.

Well I am certainly wiser than this man. It is only too likely that neither of us has any knowledge to boast of; but he thinks that he knows something which he does not know, whereas I am quite conscious of my ignorance. At any rate it seems that I am wiser than he is to this small extent, that I do not think that I know what I do not know.

- Socrates