Quotations on Ignorance

Little wit in the head makes much work for the feet.

~ Unknown

I do not approve of anything which tampers with natural ignorance.

~ Oscar Wilde

I am not ashamed to confess I am ignorant of what I do not know.

~ Marcus Tullius Cicero

Ignorant men
Don't know what good they hold in their hands until
They've flung it away.

~ Sophocles

There are many things of which a wise man might wish to be ignorant.

~ Ralph Waldo Emerson

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

~ Aldous Huxley

Against stupidity the very
Gods themselves toil in vain.

~ Friedrich von Schiller

Not ignorance, but ignorance of ignorance is the death of knowledge.

~ Alfred North Whitehead

Ignorance is the necessary condition of life itself. If we knew everything we could not endure existence for a single hour.

~ Anatole France

Ignorance gives one a large range of probabilities.

~ George Eliot

There is nothing more frightening than ignorance in action.

~ Johann Wolfgang von Goethe

When an idea is wanting, a word can always be found to take its place.

~ Johann Wolfgang von Goethe

The older we grow the greater becomes our wonder at how much ignorance one can contain without bursting one's clothes.

~ Mark Twain

I would rather have my ignorance than another man's knowledge, because I have so much of it.

~ Mark Twain

He that knows little often repeats it.

~ Thomas Fuller

The most violent element in society is ignorance.

~ Emma Goldman

Ignorance is the night of the mind, but a night without moon or star.

~ Confucius

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

~ Martin Luther King Jr

Ignorance cannot always be inferred from inaccuracy; knowledge is not always present.

~ Samuel Johnson

Everybody is ignorant, only on different subjects.

~ Will Rogers

Blind and naked Ignorance
Delivers brawling judgements,
unashamed.

~ Alfred, Lord Tennyson

Ignorance is the curse of God,
Knowledge the wing wherewith we fly to heaven.

~ William Shakespeare

- Henry VI

Ignorance is degrading only when found in company with great riches.

~ Arthur Schopenhauer

The know-nothings are, unfortunately, seldom the do-nothings.

~ Mignon McLaughlin

He knows so little and knows it so fluently.

~ Ellen Glasgow

The trouble ain't that people are ignorant: it's that they know so much that ain't so.

~ Josh Billings

Ignorance is the mother of all evils.

~ Michel de Montaigne

There is an ABC ignorance which precedes knowledge and a doctoral ignorance which comes after it.

~ Michel de Montaigne

Your ignorance cramps my conversation.

~ Bob Hope

Ignorance is of a peculiar nature. Once dispelled it is impossible to re-establish it.

~ Thomas Paine

From ignorance our comfort flows,
The only wretched are the wise.

~ Matthew Prior

To be ignorant of one's ignorance is the malady of the ignorant.

~ Amos Bronson Alcott

Ignorance breeds monsters to fill up the vacancies of the soul that are unoccupied by the verities of knowledge.

~ Horace Mann

There is more stupidity around than hydrogen, and it has a longer shelf life.

~ Frank Zappa