This site is dedicated to the memory of Dr. Alan William Smolowe who gave birth to the creation of this database.
Marcus Aurelius, Marcus Aurelius Antoninus Augustus
Begin each day by telling yourself: Today I shall be meeting with interference, ingratitude, insolence, disloyalty, ill-will, and selfishness – all of them due to the offenders’ ignorance of what is good or evil.
Day | Good | Ignorance | Selfishness |
Marcus Aurelius, Marcus Aurelius Antoninus Augustus
If someone is able to show me that what I think or do is not right, I will happily change, for I seek the truth, by which no one was ever truly harmed. It is the person who continues in his self-deception and ignorance who is harmed.
Ignorance | Self-deception | Will | Think |
Mark Twain, pen name of Samuel Langhorne Clemens
To succeed in life, you need two things: ignorance and confidence.
Mark Twain, pen name of Samuel Langhorne Clemens
Education is the path from cocky ignorance to miserable uncertainty.
Mark Twain, pen name of Samuel Langhorne Clemens
All you need in this life is ignorance and confidence and then success is sure.
Martin Tupper, fully Martin Farquhar Tupper
Knowledge holdeth by the hilt, and heweth out a road to conquest; Ignorance graspeth the blade, and is wounded by its own good sword.
Marquis de Sade, born Donatien Alphonse François de Sade
Every principle is a judgment, every judgment the outcome of experience, and experience is only acquired by the exercise of the senses; whence it follows that religious principles bear upon nothing whatever and are not in the slightest innate. Ignorance and fear, you will repeat to them, ignorance and fear -- those are the twin bases of every religion.
Experience | Fear | Ignorance | Judgment | Nothing | Principles | Will |
Maya Angelou, born Marguerite Annie Johnson
We allow our ignorance to prevail upon us and make us think we can survive alone, alone in patches, alone in groups, alone in races, even alone in genders.
Maya Angelou, born Marguerite Annie Johnson
Children's talent to endure stems from their ignorance of alternatives.
Maya Angelou, born Marguerite Annie Johnson
When great trees fall, rocks on distant hills shudder, lions hunker down in tall grasses, and even elephants lumber after safety. When great trees fall in forests, small things recoil into silence, their senses eroded beyond fear. When great souls die, the air around us becomes light, rare, sterile. We breathe, briefly. Our eyes, briefly, see with a hurtful clarity. Our memory, suddenly sharpened, examines, gnaws on kind words unsaid, promised walks never taken. Great souls die and our reality, bound to them, takes leave of us. Our souls, dependent upon their nurture, now shrink, wizened. Our minds, formed and informed by their radiance, fall away. We are not so much maddened as reduced to the unutterable ignorance of dark, cold caves. And when great souls die, after a period peace blooms, slowly and always irregularly. Spaces fill with a kind of soothing electric vibration. Our senses, restored, never to be the same, whisper to us. They existed. They existed. We can be. Be and be better. For they existed.
Maya Angelou, born Marguerite Annie Johnson
My mother said I must always be intolerant of ignorance but understanding of illiteracy.
Ignorance | Mother | Understanding |
Meher Baba, born Merwan Sheriar Irani
When the bubble of ignorance bursts the self realizes its oneness with the indivisible Self. Words that proceed from the Source of Truth have real meaning. But when men speak these words as their own, the words become meaningless.
Meher Baba, born Merwan Sheriar Irani
There are no divisions as such, but there is an appearance of separateness because of ignorance. This means that everything is of ignorance and that every one is Ignorance personified.
Appearance | Ignorance | Means |
Meher Baba, born Merwan Sheriar Irani
Awaken from your ignorance and try at least to understand that, in the uncompromisingly Indivisible Oneness, not only is the Avatar God, but also the ant and the sparrow, just as one and all of you are nothing but God. The only apparent difference is in the states of consciousness. The Avatar knows that that which is a sparrow is not a sparrow, whereas the sparrow does not realize this and, being ignorant of its ignorance, identifies itself as a sparrow. Live not in ignorance. Do not waste your precious life-span in differentiating and judging your fellowmen, but learn to long for the love of God. Even in the midst of your worldly activities, live only to find and realize your true identity with your Beloved God.
Meher Baba, born Merwan Sheriar Irani
Awaken from your ignorance and try at least to understand that, in the uncompromisingly Indivisible Oneness, not only is the Avatar God, but also the ant and the sparrow, just as one and all of you are nothing but God. The only apparent difference is in the states of consciousness. The Avatar knows that that which is a sparrow is not a sparrow, whereas the sparrow does not realize this and, being ignorant of its ignorance, identifies itself as a sparrow.
Ignorance | Nothing | Understand |
Meister Eckhart, formally Meister von Hochheim
We must come into a transformed knowing, an unknowing which comes not from ignorance but from knowledge.
Michel de Montaigne, fully Lord Michel Eyquem de Montaigne
Miracles arise from our ignorance of nature, not from nature.
Shall we educate ourselves in what is known, and then casting away all we have acquired, turn to ignorance for aid to guide us among the unknown?