"To be ignorant of
one's ignorance is the malady of the ignorant"
Amos Bronson Alcott
"There are in fact
four very significant stumblingblocks in the way of grasping the truth, which hinder every man however learned, and scarcely
allow anyone to win a clear title to wisdom, namely, the example
of weak and unworthy authority, longstanding custom, the feeling of
the ignorant crowd, and the hiding of our own ignorance while making a
display of our apparent knowledge."
Roger Bacon,
(1220-1292) Source: Opus Majus, 1266-67
"The full area of ignorance is not mapped: we are at present only exploring its fringes."
J. D. Bernal, (1901-1971) Irish-born scientist
"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
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."
Albert Camus, The Plague, Modern Library Edition, p. 120
G.K. Chesterton, The
Speaker, 12/15/00
Oliver
Wendell Holmes
President James Monroe,
First Inaugural Address, 1817
"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."
Thomas Paine
"Our knowledge can only be finite, while our ignorance must necessarily be infinite."
"We...are
not
really free if we can't control our own government
and its
policies. And we will never do that if we remain ignorant."
"An ignorant person is one who doesn't know what you have just found out."
Will Rogers
"Men are born ignorant, not stupid; they are made stupid by education."
Bertrand
Russell
"Someone once said that the most important knowledge is knowledge of our own ignorance.
Our schools are depriving millions of students of that kind of knowledge by promoting
"self-esteem" and encouraging them to have opinions on things of which they are grossly
ignorant, if not misinformed."
Thomas
Sowell