Ignorant quotes
698 quotes on this topic — from poets, philosophers, and thinkers across history.
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"We know then the existence and nature of the finite, because we also are finite and have extension. We know the existence of the infinite and are ignorant of its nature, because it has extension like us, but not limits like us. But we know neither the existence nor the nature of God, because he has neither extension nor limits."
"And it came to pass that in the hands of the ignorant, the words of the Bible were used to beat plowshares into swords"
"All men are ignorant, just in different fields."
"To be ignorant of motion is to be ignorant of nature"
"If I am given a formula, and I am ignorant of its meaning, it cannot teach me anything, but if I already know it what does the formula teach me?"
"Nobody is qualified to become a statesman who is entirely ignorant of the problem of wheat."
"In this present crisis, government is not the solution to our problem, government IS the problem. It isn't so much that liberals are ignorant, it's just that they know so much that isn't so."
"Therefore I say: know the enemy and know yourself; in a hundred battles you will never be in peril. When you are ignorant of the enemy but know yourself, your chances of winning or losing are equal. If ignorant both of your enemy and of yourself, you are certain in every battle to be in peril."
"Even the wisest woman you talk to is ignorant of something you may know, but an elegant woman never forgets her elegance."
"The person you consider ignorant and insignificant is the one who came from God, that he might learn bliss from grief and knowledge from gloom."
"When grown-up persons indulge in practical jokes, the fact gauges them. They have lived narrow, obscure, and ignorant lives, and at full manhood they still retain and cherish a job lot of left-over standards and ideals that would have been discarded with their boyhood if they had then moved out into the world and a broader life."
"A man who is ignorant of foreign languages is also ignorant of his own language."
"To be immortal is commonplace; except for man, all creatures are immortal, for they are ignorant of death; what is divine, terrible, incomprehensible, is to know that one is immortal."
"We have a very precise image - an image at times shameless - of what we have lost, but we are ignorant of what may follow or replace it."
"Experience has taught me that those who give their time to the absorbing claims of what is called society, not having leisure to keep up a large acquaintance with the organs of opinion, remain much more ignorant of the general state either of the public mind, or of the active and instructed part of it, than a recluse who reads the newspapers need be."
"Timidity betrays want of powers, and audacity a want of skill. There are, indeed, two things, knowledge and opinion, of which the one makes its possessor really to know, the other to be ignorant."
"Without willing it, I had gone from being ignorant of being ignorant to being aware of being aware. And the worst part of my awareness was that I didn't know what I was aware of. I knew I knew very little, but I was certain that the things I had yet to learn wouldn't be taught to me at George Washington High School."
"It is a just retribution for improper sexual misconduct"
"Art is never chaste. It ought to be forbidden to ignorant innocents, never allowed into contact with those not sufficiently prepared. Yes, art is dangerous. Where it is chaste, it is not art."
"Brass shines as fair to the ignorant as gold to the goldsmiths."
