Quotes about Ignorance

Ignorance is a treasure of infinite price that most men squander, when they should cherish its least fragments; some ruin it by educating themselves, others, unable to so much as conceive of making use of it, let it waste away.  Quite on the contrary, we should search for it assiduously  in what we think we know best.  Leaf through a dictionary or try to make one, and you will find that every word covers and masks a well so bottomless that the questions you toss into it arouse no more than an echo.

Probably no one of us has the True Religion. But all of us together - if we are allowed to be free - are discovering ways of conversing about the great mysteries. The pretense to know all the answers to the deepest mysteries is, of course, the grossest fraud. And any people who declare a Jihad, a holy war on unbelievers - those who do not share their believers' pretended omniscience - are enemies of thinking men and woman and of civilization. I see religion as only a way of asking unanswerable questions, of sharing the joy of a community of quest, and solacing one another in our ignorance.

"In general, Loquacity (rambling talk) opens the doors of the soul, and the devout warmth of the heart at once escapes.  Empty talk does the same, but even more so... Empty talk is the door to criticism and slander, the spreader of false rumors and opinions, the sower of discord and strife.  It stifles the taste for mental work and almost always serves as a cover for absence of sound knowledge..."

Saint Theophan the Recluse

Only a fool will deny its own ignorance.

You can ignore my messages and I can ignore your eyes, but ignorance doesn't make my messages nor your eyes non-existing.

He would also say: A boor cannot be sin-fearing, an ignoramus cannot be pious, a bashful one cannot learn, a short-tempered person cannot teach, nor does anyone who does much business grow wise. In a place where there are no men, strive to be a man

Growth requires change,
and with growth there is pain,
but it is short lived compared
to living every day
with the pain of ignorance.

Marianne Goldweber

Believe me, many things are attributed to gravity and wisdom which are really due to incapacity and sloth. Men often despise what they despair of obtaining. It is in the very nature of ignorance to scorn what it cannot understand, and to desire to keep others from attaining what it cannot reach. Hence the false judgments upon matters of which we know nothing, by which we evince our envy quite as clearly as our stupidity.

-Francesco di Petracco

Nirvana means to extinguish the burning fires of the Three Poisons: greed, anger, and ignorance. This can be accomplished by letting go of dissatisfaction.

Zan Yu said, "Once there are so many people, what should be done?"

"Enrich them," said the Master.

"Once they are enriched, what next?"

"Educate them."

In our society, confidence leads to knowledge - which leads to power - which leads to pride - which leads to a fear of seeming ignorant - which constricts learning like an iron vice.  We must understand that confidence is a blessing, for it is the embodiment of self-love, and through it we find the fuel for innovation and progress.  We must realize that ignorance is merely the opportunity to learn more.  And lastly, we must marvel rather than groan at the fact that there will always be more to learn...
Only then will we be free of the intellectual prisons we have so readily caged ourselves within.

If you think that education is expensive, try ignorance.

Samsaric pleasures are like salt water, the more we indulge, the more we crave

Eating with the fullest pleasure - pleasure, that is, that does not depend on ignorance - is perhaps the profoundest enactment of our connection with the world. In this pleasure we experience and celebrate our dependence and our gratitude, for we are living from mystery, from creatures we did not make and powers we cannot comprehend.

True Knowing, is the surest sign of ignorance. --XN

We have nothing to lose by trusting the infinite power of the Self, except the bondage of our own ignorance.

We, ignorant of ourselves, beg often our own harms, which the wise powers deny us for our good; so find we profit by losing of our prayers.

We are not innocent children victimized by a big bad world; if our world is big and bad, we made it that way. This is what the Buddha taught. The “other” is the child's boogeyman, the projection of our own fears onto a terrifying object of our imagination, which in turn terrorizes us. Our ignorance is not seeing that we are the other. We cannot afford to confuse innocence with this ignorance. Violence is not a permanent, immutable, fixed object. It is a state of mind, an expression of ignorance, with no more solid substance than a cloud. We cannot make a frontal attack on violence. Even protecting ourselves from it fuels its boogeyman existence. But the Buddha taught that we can change. This was his good news: that there is a way to alleviate suffering by freeing our minds from greed, anger, and ignorance. Yet until we apprehend the ways in which we are Oklahoma City, the bombs and the baby bears, the victims and the violators, we will continue to blame “them,” all the while proclaiming our innocence and evading our responsibilities.

"Most people, including ourselves, live in a world of relative ignorance. We are even comfortable with that ignorance, because it is all we know. When we first start facing truth, the process may be frightening, and many people run back to their old lives. But if you continue to seek truth, you will eventually be able to handle it better. In fact, you want more! It's true that many people around you now may think you are weird or even a danger to society, but you don't care. Once you've tasted the truth, you won't ever want to go back to being ignorant"

Don't expect others to treat you better than they treat themselves.  If you choose to deal with them (or must), it is best to come from a place of compassion toward their ignorance and lack of love.  Be solid enough to deal with it or step back to work on yourself first.   ~Danielle Marie Crume

Prejudice is not a symptom of evil nor is it a symptom of stupidity, It is a symptom of ignorance.

Being kept in ignorance about our orgasmic natures iz abuse.
                                                 

What is true, just, and beautiful is not determined by popular vote. The masses everywhere are ignorant, short-sighted, motivated by envy, and easy to fool. Democratic politicians must appeal to these masses in order to be elected. Whoever is the best demagogue will win. Almost by necessity, then, democracy will lead to the perversion of truth, justice and beauty.

Ignorance can be bliss--without it, far fewer children would be born!

Representation of wealth is not the wealth. We have forgotten this. We regard money as wealth and debt as money.

There is no wealth like knowledge, no poverty like ignorance.

The greatest enemy of knowledge is not ignorance but the ilusion of knowledge itself.

To be truly ignorant, be content with your own knowledge.

"To move forward, you must figure out exactly what is obstructing you. Whatever it is, it isn't really there; it has no reality, no substance. It's your own creation, a phantom lurking in the shadows of your mind, a shadow demon. Your obstructions are your demons, and your demons are shadow dwellers. They live and thrive in the half-light of ignorance, so the way to slay a demon is by illuminating it with the full force and power of your focused attention; by looking at it, hard. Banish shadow with light and see for yourself that no obstruction exists, nor ever did. We create our demons and we feed them. To awaken we must slay them. That's really the whole process: Slay one demon, take one step.

Repeat."

Religion needs science to keep it away from superstition and keep it close to reality, to protect it from creationism, which at the end of the day is a kind of paganism - it's turning God into a nature god. And science needs religion in order to have a conscience, to know that, just because something is possible, it may not be a good thing to do.