Great Throughts Treasury

This site is dedicated to the memory of Dr. Alan William Smolowe who gave birth to the creation of this database.

Related Quotes

Marshall McLuhan, fully Herbert Marshall McLuhan

The ignorance of how to use knowledge stockpiles exponentially.

Ignorance | Knowledge |

Henry Adams, aka Henry Brooks Adams

Nothing in education is so astonishing as the amount of ignorance it accumulates in the form of inert facts.

Education | Ignorance |

Jean Toomer

The realization of ignorance is the first act of knowing.

Ignorance |

James Ramsey Ullman

It is the ultimate wisdom of the mountains that we are never so much human as when we are striving for what is beyond our grasp, and that there is no battle worth the winning save that against our own ignorance and fear.

Battle | Ignorance | Wisdom | Worth | Winning |

James Madison

During almost fifteen centuries has the legal establishment of Christianity been on trial. What have been its fruits? More or less in all places, pride and indolence in the Clergy, ignorance and servility in the laity, in both, superstition, bigotry and persecution.

Bigotry | Ignorance | Indolence | Pride |

John Calvin

It would be the height of absurdity to label ignorance tempered by humility "faith"!

Humility | Ignorance | Absurdity |

Jim Rohn

Ignorance is not bliss. Ignorance is poverty. Ignorance is devastation. Ignorance is tragedy. Ignorance is illness. It all stems from ignorance.

Ignorance |

James Allen

They themselves are makers of themselves by virtue of the thoughts which they choose and encourage; that mind is the master weaver, both of the inner garment of character and the outer garment of circumstance, and that, as they may have hitherto woven in ignorance and pain they may now weave in enlightenment and happiness.

Character | Enlightenment | Ignorance | Mind | Pain | Virtue | Virtue |

Jeremy Collier

Confidence, as opposed, to modesty and distinguished from decent assurance, proceeds from self-opinion, and is occasioned by ignorance and flattery

Ignorance | Modesty |

Jean de La Bruyère

Profound ignorance makes a man dogmatic. The man who knows nothing thinks he is teaching others what he has just learned himself; the man who knows a great deal cannot imagine that what he is saying is not common knowledge, and speaks more indifferently.

Ignorance | Man | Nothing |

Joseph Wood Krutch

It is not ignorance but knowledge which is the mother of wonder.

Ignorance | Knowledge | Mother |

Julian of Norwich NULL

So our customary practice of prayer was brought to mind: how through our ignorance and inexperience in the ways of love we spend so much time on petition. I saw that it is indeed more worthy of God and more truly pleasing to him that through his goodness we should pray with full confidence, and by his grace cling to him with real understanding and unshakeable love, than that we should go on making as many petitions as our souls are capable of.

God | Grace | Ignorance | Love | Practice | Prayer | Time | Understanding | God |

Karl Menninger, fully Karl Augustus Menninger

The adjuration to be "normal" seems shockingly repellent to me; I see neither hope nor comfort in sinking to that low level. I think it is ignorance that makes people think of abnormality only with horror and allows them to remain undismayed at the proximity of "normal" to average and mediocre. For surely anyone who achieves anything is, essentially, abnormal.

Comfort | Hope | Ignorance | People | Think |

Kurt Hahn, fully Kurt Martin "the rod" Hahn

Without self-discovery, a person may still have self confidence, but it is a self confidence built on ignorance and it melts in the face of heavy burdens. Self discovery is the end product of a great challenge mastered, when the mind commands the body to do the seemingly impossible, when courage and strength are summoned to extraordinary limits for the sake of something outside the self--a principle, an onerous task, another human life.

Body | Challenge | Confidence | Courage | Discovery | Ignorance | Mind | Self | Strength | Discovery |

Kedar Joshi

Certainty is the most vivid condition of ignorance and the most necessary condition for knowledge.

Ignorance |

Kofi Annan, fully Kofi Atta Annan

Ignorance and prejudice are the handmaidens of propaganda. Our mission, therefore, is to confront ignorance with knowledge, bigotry with tolerance, and isolation with the outstretched hand of generosity. Racism can, will, and must be defeated.

Bigotry | Ignorance | Isolation | Prejudice |

John Dalberg-Acton, Lord Acton, fully John Emerich Edward Dalberg-Acton, 1st Baron Acton

There are two things which cannot be attacked in front: ignorance and narrow-mindedness. They can only be shaken by the simple development of the contrary qualities. They will not bear discussion.

Ignorance | Will |

Lewis Thomas

The only solid piece of scientific truth about which I feel totally confident is that we are profoundly ignorant about nature... It is this sudden confrontation with the depth and scope of ignorance that represents the most significant contribution of twentieth-century science to the human intellect.

Ignorance | Science | Truth |

Moses Mendelssohn

Consciousness of myself, combined with complete ignorance of everything that does not fall within my sphere of thinking, is the most telling proof of my substantiality outside God, of my original existence.

Ignorance |