This site is dedicated to the memory of Dr. Alan William Smolowe who gave birth to the creation of this database.
Education is the process of leading people from cocksure ignorance to thoughtful uncertainty.
Education | Ignorance | People | Uncertainty |
Molly Ivins, fully Mary Tyler "Molly" Ivins
I believe that ignorance is the root of all evil. And that no one knows the truth.
Not ignorance, but ignorance of ignorance, is the death of knowledge.
To be ignorant of one's ignorance is the malady of the ignorant.
If ignorance is bliss, why aren't more people happy?
Benjamin Disraeli, 1st Earl of Beaconsfield
The magic of first love is the ignorance that it can never end.
Axel Gustafsson Oxenstierna af Södermöre, Count of Södermöre
The quality of books in a library is often a cloud of witnesses of the ignorance of the owner.
Benjamin Disraeli, 1st Earl of Beaconsfield
The magic of first love is the ignorance that it can ever end.
Black Elk, formallly Heȟáka Sápa NULL
Any man who is attached to things of this world is one who lives in ignorance and is being consumed by the snakes of his own passions.
It is almost as difficult to make a man unlearn his errors as his knowledge. Mal-information is more hopeless that non-information; for error is always more busy than ignorance. Ignorance is a blank sheet, on which we may write; but error is a scribbled one, from which we must erase. Ignorance is contented to stand still with her back to the truth; but error is more presumptuous, and proceeds in the wrong direction. Ignorance has no light, but error flows a false one. The consequence is, that error, when she retraces her steps, has farther to go before she can arrive at truth, than ignorance.
Error | Ignorance | Knowledge | Light | Man | Truth | Wrong |
A man who knows the world will not only make the most of everything he does know, but of many things he does not know, and will gain more credit by his adroit mode of hiding his ignorance than the pedant by his awkward attempt to exhibit his erudition.
Error is always more busy than ignorance. Ignorance is a blank sheet on which we may write; but error is a scribbled one from which we must first erase.
Daniel Boorstin, fully Daniel Joseph Boorstin
I have observed that the world has suffered far less from ignorance than from pretensions to knowledge. It is not skeptics or explorers but fanatics and ideologues who menace decency and progress. No agnostic ever burned anyone at the stake or tortured a pagan, a heretic, or an unbeliever.
Agnostic | Ignorance | Knowledge | Progress | World | Agnostic |
The recipe for perpetual ignorance is: Be satisfied with your opinions and content with your knowledge.