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

Erle Stanley Gardner

Where ignorance is bliss, a little learning is a dangerous thing.

Ignorance | Learning | Little | Wisdom |

Thomas Haliburton, fully Thomas Chandler Haliburton, pseudonym "Sam Slick"

A man is never astonished or ashamed that he does not know what another does; but he is surprised at the gross ignorance of the other in not knowing what he knows.

Ignorance | Knowing | Man | Wisdom |

William Gurnall

No man prays in faith who thinks he knows better than God; or who, not knowing, wishes that his ignorance may overrule God's wisdom.

Better | Faith | God | Ignorance | Knowing | Man | Wisdom | Wishes |

Aldous Leonard Huxley

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

Ignorance | Wisdom |

Roswell Dwight Hitchcock

Twin-sister of natural and revealed religion, and of heavenly birth, science will never belie her celestial origin, nor cease to sympathize with all that emanates from the same pure home. Human ignorance and prejudice may for a time seem to have divorced what God has joined together; but human ignorance and prejudice shall at length pass away, and then science and religion shall be seen blending their parti-colored rays into one beautiful bow of light, linking heaven to earth and earth to heaven.

Birth | Earth | God | Heaven | Ignorance | Light | Prejudice | Religion | Science | Time | Will | Wisdom | God |

Oliver Wendell Holmes, Sr.

The best part of knowledge is that which teaches us where knowledge leaves off and ignorance begins.

Ignorance | Knowledge | Wisdom |

James Hilton

If a child who wanted to be a teacher I would bid him Godspeed as if he were going to war. For indeed the war against prejudice, greed and ignorance is eternal, and those who dedicate themselves to it give their lives not less because they may live to see some faction of the battle won.

Battle | Eternal | Greed | Ignorance | Prejudice | War | Wisdom | Child | Teacher |

John F. Kennedy, fully John Fitzgerald "Jack" Kennedy

The greater our knowledge increases, the greater our ignorance unfolds.

Ignorance | Knowledge | Wisdom |

Gottfried Leibniz, fully Gottfried Wilhalm von Leibniz, Baron von Leibnitz

Knowledge is leagued with the universe, and findeth a friend in all things; but ignorance is everywhere a stranger, unwelcome; ill at ease and out of place.

Friend | Ignorance | Knowledge | Universe | Wisdom |

Hendrik Willem Van Loon

Any frontal attack on ignorance is bound to fail because the masses are always ready to defend their most precious possession - their ignorance.

Ignorance | Wisdom |

Michel de Montaigne, fully Lord Michel Eyquem de Montaigne

Wonder is the foundation of all philosophy, inquiry the progress, ignorance the end... It's a sign of contraction of the mind when it is content or of weariness.

Ignorance | Inquiry | Mind | Philosophy | Progress | Wisdom | Wonder |

Michel de Montaigne, fully Lord Michel Eyquem de Montaigne

The laws of conscience, which we pretend to be derived from nature, proceed from custom... It may be said with some plausibility that there is an abecedarian (meaning alphabetically or rudimentary) ignorance that comes before knowledge, and another doctoral ignorance that comes after knowledge; ignorance that knowledge creates and engenders, just as it undoes and destroys the first.

Conscience | Custom | Ignorance | Knowledge | Meaning | Nature | Wisdom |

Metastasio, aka Pietro Petastasio, pseudonymn for Pietro Antonio Domenico Trapassi NULL

O, how full of error is the judgment of mankind. They wonder at results when they are ignorant of the reasons. They call it fortune when they know not the cause, and thus worship their own ignorance changed into a deity.

Cause | Error | Fortune | Ignorance | Judgment | Mankind | Wisdom | Wonder | Worship |

Jeremy Taylor

A religion without mystery must be a religion without God. In dwelling on divine mysteries, keep thy heart humble, thy thoughts reverent, thy soul holy. Let not philosophy be ashamed to be confuted, nor logic to be confounded, nor reason to be surpassed. What thou canst not prove, approve; what thou canst not comprehend, believe; what thou canst believe, admire and love and obey. so shall thine ignorance be satisfied in thy faith, and thy doubt be swallowed up in thy reverence, and thy faith be as influential as sight. Put out thing own candle, and then shalt thou see clearly the sun of righteousness.

Doubt | Faith | God | Heart | Ignorance | Logic | Love | Mystery | Philosophy | Reason | Religion | Reverence | Righteousness | Soul | Wisdom |

Lillian Smith, fully Lillian Eugenia Smith

To believe in something not yet proved and to underwrite it with our lives; it is the only way we can leave the future open. Man, surrounded by facts, permitting himself no surprise, no intuitive flash, no great hypothesis, no risk, is in a locked cell. Ignorance cannot seal the mind and imagination more securely.

Future | Hypothesis | Ignorance | Imagination | Man | Mind | Risk | Wisdom |

Constance C. Vigil

It is poverty in a rich man to despise the poor and ignorance in a wise man to despise the ignorant.

Despise | Ignorance | Man | Poverty | Wisdom | Wise |