The nationalist not only does not disapprove of atrocities committed by his own side, but he has a remarkable capacity for not even hearing about them.

The beginning of an acquaintance whether with persons or things is to get a definite outline of our ignorance.

We have also arranged things so that almost no one understands science and technology. This is a prescription for disaster. We might get away with it for a while, but sooner or later this combustible mixture of ignorance and power is going to blow up in our faces.

Patriotism, when it wants to make itself felt in the domain of learning, is a dirty fellow who should be thrown out of doors.

There are plenty of recommendations on how to get out of trouble cheaply and fast. Most of them come down to this: Deny your responsibility.

There is a cult of ignorance in the United States, and there has always been. The strain of anti-intellectualism has been a constant thread winding its way through our political and cultural life, nurtured by the false notion that democracy means that my ignorance is just as good as your knowledge.

To know anything well involves a profound sensation of ignorance.

Belief consists in accepting the affirmations of the soul; unbelief, in denying them.

The beginning of Canadian cultural nationalism was not ‚Am I really that oppressed?‘ but ‚Am I really that boring?‘

Nationalism has a way of oppressing others.

Those parts of history that would undermine the vision of the Left – which prevails in our education system from elementary school to postgraduate study – are not likely to get much attention.

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

I’m never a reliable narrator, unbiased or objective.

The greater our knowledge increases the more our ignorance unfolds.

Entire ignorance is not so terrible or extreme an evil, and is far from being the greatest of all; too much cleverness and too much learning, accompanied with ill bringing-up, are far more fatal.

Beware of false knowledge; it is more dangerous than ignorance.

All I know is just what I read in the papers, and that’s an alibi for my ignorance.

Hide our ignorance as we will, an evening of wine soon reveals it.

You’ll never have a quiet world till you knock the patriotism out of the human race.

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.

All you need in this life is ignorance and confidence, and then success is sure.

True friendship can afford true knowledge. It does not depend on darkness and ignorance.

Ignorant men raise questions that wise men answered a thousand years ago.

My mother said I must always be intolerant of ignorance but understanding of illiteracy. That some people, unable to go to school, were more educated and more intelligent than college professors.

Ignorance and bungling with love are better than wisdom and skill without.

Human beings may well be unable to break free of the dictatorship of greed that spreads like a miasma over the world, but no longer will we be an inarticulate and ignorant humanity, confused by our enslavement to superior cruelty and weaponry.

It is in the admission of ignorance and the admission of uncertainty that there is a hope for the continuous motion of human beings in some direction that doesn’t get confined, permanently blocked, as it has so many times before in various periods in the history of man.

George Washington, as a boy, was ignorant of the commonest accomplishments of youth. He could not even lie.

Of those beings who live in ignorance, shut up and confined, as it were, in an egg, I have first broken the eggshell of ignorance and alone in the universe obtained the most exalted, universal Buddhahood.

It is never too late to give up our prejudices.

My view is that at a younger age your optimism is more and you have more imagination etc. You have less bias.

Food is everything we are. It’s an extension of nationalist feeling, ethnic feeling, your personal history, your province, your region, your tribe, your grandma. It’s inseparable from those from the get-go.

People always fear change. People feared electricity when it was invented, didn’t they? People feared coal, they feared gas-powered engines… There will always be ignorance, and ignorance leads to fear. But with time, people will come to accept their silicon masters.

Reparations – not just aid – should be provided by those responsible for devastating Iraqi civilian society by cruel sanctions and military actions, and – together with other criminal states – for supporting Saddam Hussein through his worst atrocities and beyond. That is the minimum that honesty requires.

Is it ignorance or apathy? Hey, I don’t know and I don’t care.

I never had that feeling that I had to carry the weight of somebody’s ignorance around with me. And that was true for racists who wanted to use the ‚n‘ word when talking about me or about my people, or the stupidity of people who really wanted to belittle other folks because they weren’t pretty or they weren’t rich or they weren’t clever.

Though silence is not necessarily an admission, it is not a denial, either.

I believe in American exceptionalism, just as I suspect that the Brits believe in British exceptionalism and the Greeks believe in Greek exceptionalism.

Ignorance of all things is an evil neither terrible nor excessive, nor yet the greatest of all; but great cleverness and much learning, if they be accompanied by a bad training, are a much greater misfortune.

The only foes that threaten America are the enemies at home, and these are ignorance, superstition and incompetence.

I have never sat down and studied the Bible, never consciously echoed its language, and am, in reality, as ignorant of it as most brought-up Christians. All of the Bible that I use in my work is remembered from childhood and is the common property of all who were brought up in English-speaking communities.

As men are not able to fight against death, misery, ignorance, they have taken it into their heads, in order to be happy, not to think of them at all.

It is necessary to look at the results of observation objectively, because you, the experimenter, might like one result better than another.

The multitude of books is making us ignorant.

Real knowledge is to know the extent of one’s ignorance.

Most ignorance is vincible ignorance. We don’t know because we don’t want to know.

The bookful blockhead, ignorantly read, With loads of learned lumber in his head.

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

If a nation expects to be ignorant and free, in a state of civilization, it expects what never was and never will be.

Guard against the impostures of pretended patriotism.

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

There is no darkness but ignorance.

The moment a person forms a theory, his imagination sees in every object only the traits which favor that theory.

Ignorance is the curse of God; knowledge is the wing wherewith we fly to heaven.

The idea that putting Americans ‚first‘ requires a withdrawal from the world is simply wrongheaded because a retreat would achieve exactly the opposite for our citizens.

It is a mania shared by philosophers of all ages to deny what exists and to explain what does not exist.

One of the great attractions of patriotism – it fulfills our worst wishes. In the person of our nation we are able, vicariously, to bully and cheat. Bully and cheat, what’s more, with a feeling that we are profoundly virtuous.

God is, even though the whole world deny him. Truth stands, even if there be no public support. It is self-sustained.

A newspaper is a device for making the ignorant more ignorant and the crazy crazier.

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

Ignorant kindness may have the effect of cruelty; but to be angry with it as if it were direct cruelty would be an ignorant unkindness.