Quotes
Quotes about Ignorance
The common curse of mankind,--folly and ignorance.
Angels and ministers of grace, defend us!
Be thou a spirit of health or goblin damn'd,
Bring with thee airs from heaven or blasts from hell,
Be thy intents wicked or charitable,
Thou comest in such a questionable shape
That I will speak to thee: I 'll call thee Hamlet,
King, father, royal Dane: O, answer me!
Let me not burst in ignorance, but tell
Why thy canonized bones, hearsed in death,
Have burst their cerements; why the sepulchre,
Wherein we saw thee quietly inurn'd,
Hath oped his ponderous and marble jaws
To cast thee up again. What may this mean,
That thou, dead corse, again in complete steel
Revisit'st thus the glimpses of the moon,
Making night hideous, and we fools of nature
So horridly to shake our disposition
With thoughts beyond the reaches of our souls?
For "ignorance is the mother of devotion," as all the world knows.
Ignorance of the law excuses no man; not that all men know the law, but because 't is an excuse every man will plead, and no man can tell how to refute him.
Your ignorance is the mother of your devotion to me.
From ignorance our comfort flows.
The only wretched are the wise.
Must helpless man, in ignorance sedate,
Roll darkling down the torrent of his fate?
To each his suff'rings; all are men,
Condemn'd alike to groan,--
The tender for another's pain,
Th' unfeeling for his own.
Yet ah! why should they know their fate,
Since sorrow never comes too late,
And happiness too swiftly flies?
Thought would destroy their paradise.
No more; where ignorance is bliss,
'T is folly to be wise.
His best companions, innocence and health;
And his best riches, ignorance of wealth.
I remember, I remember
The fir-trees dark and high;
I used to think their slender tops
Were close against the sky;
It was a childish ignorance,
But now 't is little joy
To know I 'm farther off from heaven
Than when I was a boy.
Ignorance never settles a question.
Mr. Kremlin was distinguished for ignorance; for he had only one idea, and that was wrong.
Blind and naked Ignorance
Delivers brawling judgments, unashamed,
On all things all day long.
Slavery is but half abolished, emancipation is but half completed, while millions of freemen with votes in their hands are left without education. Justice to them, the welfare of the States in which they live, the safety of the whole Republic, the dignity of the elective franchise,--all alike demand that the still remaining bonds of
ignorance shall be unloosed and broken, and the minds as well as the bodies of the emancipated go free.
And I have written three books on the soul,
Proving absurd all written hitherto,
And putting us to ignorance again.
For I say this is death and the sole death,--
When a man's loss comes to him from his gain,
Darkness from light, from knowledge ignorance,
And lack of love from love made manifest.
Ignorance of one's misfortunes is clear gain.
For what constitutes a child?--Ignorance. What constitutes a child?--Want of instruction; for they are our equals so far as their degree of knowledge permits.
If any man can convince me and bring home to me that I do not think or act aright, gladly will I change; for I search after truth, by which man never yet was harmed. But he is harmed who abideth on still in his deception and ignorance.
Ignorance plays the chief part among men, and the multitude of words; but opportunity will prevail.
He said that there was one only good, namely, knowledge; and one only evil, namely, ignorance.
He declared that he knew nothing, except the fact of his ignorance.
Let ignorance talk as it will, learning has its value.
If ignorance and passion are the foes of popular morality, it must be confessed that moral indifference is the malady of the cultivated classes. The modern separation of enlightenment and virtue, of thought and conscience, of the intellectual aristocracy from the honest and common crowd is the greatest danger that can threaten liberty.
That what you call evil is no more than ignorance of the way.
