100 Quotes About Ignorance Which Show Its Positives & Negatives

Ignorance, they say, is bliss. Sometimes it is better to be ignorant about certain things, however, most of the time we cannot afford to be ignorant. We need to be well informed about things to form our own views about that and if we are ignorant, we might be in a dilemma as to what is right and what is not. As Confucius said, “Real knowledge is to know the extent of one's ignorance.” Therefore, once we know the limitations of our knowledge, we can say that we have gained real knowledge.

To live better we cannot afford to turn blind eyes to our surroundings and the society. We ought to have proper information about the place we live in and once we gain that, we can work towards making it better. Not only that, in every sphere if we choose not to remain ignorant, we can help make a difference, and this will be an achievement in itself.

Being ignorant can at times spare us pain and heart break but that would not deny the existence of anything. Things are as they are and simply by ignoring that we cannot deny facts. These quotes about ignorance might change your perspective.

Facts do not cease to exist because they are ignored.

- Complete Essays 2, Aldous Huxley

When I was a boy of 14, my father was so ignorant I could hardly stand to have the old man around. But when I got to be 21, I was astonished at how much the old man had learned in seven years.

- Mark Twain

War is peace. Freedom is slavery. Ignorance is strength.

- 1984, George Orwell

Whatever the cost of our libraries, the price is cheap compared to that of an ignorant nation.

- Walter Cronkite

Confidence is ignorance. If you're feeling cocky, it's because there's something you don't know.

- Artemis Fowl, Eoin Colfer

The greatest enemy of knowledge is not ignorance, it is the illusion of knowledge.

- Daniel J. Boorstin

Nothing in the world is more dangerous than sincere ignorance and conscientious stupidity.

- Martin Luther King Jr.

You are not entitled to your opinion. You are entitled to your informed opinion. No one is entitled to be ignorant.

- Harlan Ellison

Living is Easy with Eyes Closed.

- John Lennon

Without education, we are in a horrible and deadly danger of taking educated people seriously.

- G.K. Chesterton

There are no uninteresting things, only uninterested people.

- G.K. Chesterton

There is nothing more frightful than ignorance in action.

- Collected Works, Johann Wolfgang von Goethe

It takes a very long time to become young.

- Pablo Picasso

Being ignorant is not so much a shame, as being unwilling to learn.

- Benjamin Franklin

It's an universal law-- intolerance is the first sign of an inadequate education. An ill-educated person behaves with arrogant impatience, whereas truly profound education breeds humility.

- Aleksandr Solzhenitsyn

All things truly wicked start from innocence.

- Ernest Hemingway

More generally, as I shall repeat in Chapter 8, one of the truly bad effects of religion is that it teaches us that it is a virtue to be satisfied with not understanding.

- The God Delusion, Richard Dawkins

That which we manifest is before us; we are the creators of our own destiny. Be it through intention or ignorance, our successes and our failures have been brought on by none other than ourselves.

- The Art of Racing in the Rain, Garth Stein

We kill all the caterpillars, then complain there are no butterflies.

- The Dead of Night, John Marsden

He knows nothing; and he thinks he knows everything. That points clearly to a political career.

- Major Barbara, George Bernard Shaw

Education is a system of imposed ignorance.

- Manufacturing Consent: The Political Economy of the Mass Media, Noam Chomsky

Our wretched species is so made that those who walk on the well-trodden path always throw stones at those who are showing a new road.

- Philosophical Dictionary, Voltaire

If ignorance is bliss, there should be more happy people.

- Å’uvres de Victor Cousin: Introduction L'Histoire de La Philosophie. Cours de L'Histoire de La Philosophie. Cours de Philosophie Sur Le Fondemen, Victor Cousin

To know that you do not know is the best. To think you know when you do not is a disease. Recognizing this disease as a disease is to be free of it.

- Lao Tzu

I can calculate the motion of heavenly bodies but not the madness of people.

- Isaac Newton

At first, they'll only dislike what you say, but the more correct you start sounding the more they'll dislike you.

- Killosophy, Criss Jami

... there is no shame in not knowing. The problem arises when irrational thought and attendant behavior fill the vacuum left by ignorance.

- The Sky Is Not the Limit: Adventures of an Urban Astrophysicist, Neil deGrasse Tyson

A great deal of intelligence can be invested in ignorance when the need for illusion is deep.

- To Jerusalem and Back, Saul Bellow

Beware the man of a single book.

- Thomas Aquinas

If you think education is expensive, try ignorance.

- Robert Orben

What the mind doesn't understand, it worships or fears.

- Alice Walker

Occasionally he stumbled over the truth, but hastily picked himself up and hurried on as if nothing had happened.

- Winston S. Churchill

A man is responsible for his ignorance.

- Laughable Loves, Milan Kundera

Travel brings wisdom only to the wise. It renders the ignorant more ignorant than ever.

- Last Argument of Kings, Joe Abercrombie

Time after time, history demonstrates that when people don't want to believe something, they have enormous skills of ignoring it altogether.

- Dead Beat, Jim Butcher

The only victories which leave no regret are those which are gained over ignorance.

- Napoléon Bonaparte

There are in fact two things, science and opinion; the former begets knowledge, the latter ignorance.

- Hippocrates

Fear always springs from ignorance.

- Ralph Waldo Emerson

A library is like an island in the middle of a vast sea of ignorance, particularly if the library is very tall and the surrounding area has been flooded.

- Daniel Handler

Everyone has a sense of humor. If you don't laugh at jokes, you probably laugh at opinions.

- Killosophy, Criss Jami

The truth is like salt. Men want to taste a little, but too much makes everyone sick.

- The Heroes, Joe Abercrombie

A learned fool is more a fool than an ignorant fool.

- Molière

Ignorance is the parent of fear.

- Moby-Dick; or, Herman Melville

His progress through life was hampered by his tremendous sense of his own ignorance, a disability which affects all too few.

- Maskerade, Terry Pratchett

I'd tried to straighten him out, but there's only so much you can do for a person who thinks Auschwitz is a brand of beer.

- David Sedaris

I do not consider it an insult, but rather a compliment to be called an agnostic. I do not pretend to know where many ignorant men are sure — that is all that agnosticism means.

- Clarence Darrow

Nothing is so firmly believed as that which we least know.

- The Complete Essays, Michel de Montaigne

He must be very ignorant for he answers every question he is asked.

- Voltaire

It is an infantile superstition of the human spirit that virginity would be thought a virtue and not the barrier that separates ignorance from knowledge.

- Voltaire

Whoever said ignorance is bliss must have died a horrible death with a really surprised look on his face.

- Armed & Magical, Lisa Shearin

Give me the storm and tempest of thought and action, rather than the dead calm of ignorance and faith! Banish me from Eden when you will; but first let me eat of the fruit of the tree of knowledge!

- The Works Of Robert G. Ingersoll, Robert G. Ingersoll

Anything was better than nothing. Half-full was better than empty. Ignorance was the lowest form of humiliation and suffering.

- Silence, Becca Fitzpatrick

Point me out the happy man and I will point you out either extreme egotism, selfishness, evil -- or else an absolute ignorance.

- The Heart of the Matter, Graham Greene

Timendi causa est nescire - Ignorance is the cause of fear.

- Natural Questions, Seneca

Ignorance is a lot like alcohol: the more you have of it, the less you are able to see its effect on you.

- Jay M. Bylsma

Fear and realisation of ignorance, strong medicines against stupid pride.

- Sabriel, Garth Nix

It has become almost a clich� to remark that nobody boasts of ignorance of literature, but it is socially acceptable to boast ignorance of science and proudly claim incompetence in mathematics.

- Richard Dawkins

Humor can get in under the door while seriousness is still fumbling at the handle.

- G.K. Chesterton

Where ignorance is our master, there is no possibility of real peace.

- Dalai Lama

Only ignorance excuses stupidity

- Angels' Blood, Nalini Singh

Wisdom tends to grow in proportion to one's awareness of one's ignorance.

- One Minute Wisdom, Anthony de Mello

Ignorance is not stupidity, but it might as well be. And I do not like feeling stupid.

- The Curse of Chalion, Lois McMaster Bujold

Don't pretend to be what you're not, instead, pretend to what you want to be, it is not pretence, it is a journey to self realization.

- Michael Bassey Johnson

Prejudice is a product of ignorance that hides behind barriers of tradition.

- The Fourth Bear, Jasper Fforde

When you come to see you are not as wise today as you thought you were yesterday, you are wiser today.

- One Minute Wisdom, Anthony de Mello

It is always a much easier task to educate uneducated people than to re-educate the mis-educated.

- Getting Well, Herbert M. Shelton

Admission of ignorance is often the first step in our education.

- The 7 Habits of Highly Effective People: Powerful Lessons in Personal Change, Stephen R. Covey

Often, the greater our ignorance about something, the greater our resistance to change.

- Animals Matter: A Biologist Explains Why We Should Treat Animals with Compassion and Respect, Marc Bekoff

I expect what you're not aware of would fill several books, Dursely.

- Harry Potter and the Order of the Phoenix, J.K. Rowling

Nothing limits intelligence more than ignorance; nothing fosters ignorance more than one's own opinions; nothing strengthens opinions more than refusing to look at reality.

- The Visitor, Sheri S. Tepper

Religion, n. A daughter of Hope and Fear, explaining to Ignorance the nature of the Unknowable.

- The Unabridged Devil's Dictionary, Ambrose Bierce

The men on the trading floor may not have been to school, but they have Ph.D.'s in man's ignorance.

- Liar's Poker, Michael Lewis

There is no such uncertainty as a sure thing.

- Collected Poems of Robert Burns, Robert Burns

If anyone else asked that question, O He Who Is Terrible and Great, I would have said they were an ignorant fool; in you it is a sign of the disarming simplicity which is the fount of all virtue.

- The Amulet of Samarkand, Jonathan Stroud

Just tell yourself a story that'll satisfy you and pretend he told it.

- Deathless, Catherynne M. Valente

Ignorance and power and pride are a deadly mixture, you know.

- All I Really Need to Know I Learned in Kindergarten, Robert Fulghum

It's a fact that people are afraid of what they don't understand. And most are too lazy or ignorant to find out more.

- Silver Shadows, Richelle Mead

In times like the present, men should utter nothing for which they would not willingly be responsible through time and eternity.

- Abraham Lincoln

When you combine ignorance and leverage, you get some pretty interesting results.

- Warren Buffett

It is unfortunate that when you want to make some people feel like human beings, they begin to take you as an animal.

- Michael Bassey Johnson

The truth is always something that is told, not something that is known. If there were no speaking or writing, there would be no truth about anything. There would only be what is.

- The Benefactor, Susan Sontag

The last word in ignorance is the man who says of an animal or plant: 'What good is it?

- Aldo Leopold

Ignorance, as they say, is usually fatal, but sometimes it can be bliss.

- The Last Guardian, Eoin Colfer

It would be the height of absurdity to label ignorance tempered by humility "faith"! (Institutio III.2.3)

- John Calvin

It is a common sentence that knowledge is power; but who hath duly considered or set forth the power of ignorance? Knowledge slowly builds up what ignorance in an hour pulls down.

- Daniel Deronda, George Eliot

I believe in the forgiveness of sin and the redemption of ignorance.

- Adlai E. Stevenson II

There will always be haters. And the more you grow the more they hate; the more they hate the more you grow.

- Anthony Liccione

Admiration is the daughter of ignorance.

- Thomas Fuller

Ignorance is ultimately the worst enemy of a people who want to be free.

- The United States Constitution: A Graphic Adaptation, Jonathan Hennessey

No people can be both ignorant and free.

- Thomas Jefferson

No one infers a god from the simple, from the known, from what is understood, but from the complex, from the unknown, and incomprehensible. Our ignorance is God; what we know is science.

- On the Gods and Other Essays, Robert G. Ingersoll

Those at too great a distance may, I am well are, mistake ignorance for perspective.

- Dragons of Eden: Speculations on the Evolution of Human Intelligence, Carl Sagan

If the ignorance of nature gave birth to such a variety of gods, the knowledge of this nature is calculated to destroy them.

- System of Nature, Paul Henri Thiry d'Holbach

Science is the topography of ignorance.

- Oliver Wendell Holmes Sr.

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

- Benjamin Franklin

And, too ignorant to be scared, too young to be awed, Tristan Thorn traveled beyond the fields we know...

- Stardust, Neil Gaiman

What a culture we live in, we are swimming in an ocean of information, and drowning in ignorance.

- A Step of Faith, Richard Paul Evans

The moment you start arguing with an ignorant fool, you have already lost.

- Ali ibn Abi Talib

I think we risk becoming the best informed society that has ever died of ignorance.

- Reuben Blades

I'm the Ted Bundy of string theory.

- Sam Harris

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