Best ignorance & century Quotes | Short & Famous Sayings

“Liberty, next to religion has been the motive of good deeds and the common pretext of crime, from the sowing of the seed at Athens, 2,460 years ago, until the ripened harvest was gathered by men of our race. It is the delicate fruit of a mature civilization; and scarcely a century has passed since nations, that knew the meaning of the term, resolved to be free. In every age its progress has been beset by its natural enemies, by ignorance and superstition, by lust of conquest and by love of ease, by the strong man's craving for power, and the poor man's craving for food.”

“A village in a country which is taking pains to become altogether standardized and pure, which aspires to succeed Victorian England as the chief mediocrity of the world, is no longer merely provincial, no longer downy and restful in its leaf-shadowed ignorance. It is a force seeking to conquer the earth. Sure of itself, it bullies other civilizations, as a traveling salesman in a brown derby conquers the wisdom of China and tacks advertisements of cigarettes over arches for centuries dedicated to the sayings of Confucius.”

“To ignore [the] great social facts -- political facts, if you please -- and over-emphasize the old moral responsibility of the 'domestic' mother is a hollow mockery and betrays a hopeless ignorance of industrial and urban conditions in the Twentieth Century. ... Everything that counts in the common life is political.”

“The catastrophe of the tragic hero thus becomes the catastrophe of the fifth-century man; all his furious energy and intellectual daring drive him on to this terrible discovery of his fundamental ignorance - he is not the measure of all things but the thing measured and found wanting.”

Men Found Energy Century Ignorance Hero Terrible Intellectual Discovery All Things Fundamentals Tragic Daring Catastrophe Fifth Furious Tragic Hero

Author:Robert Fagles

“Pastoureau combines a charming, conversational tone with a haughtiness I found entirely endearing. A director of studies at the Ecole Pratique des Hautes Etudes at the Sorbonne in Paris, he writes from a position of professorial confidence. He has conducted extensive research into the history of colour for a quarter century and his aim is to correct misapprehensions and banish ignorance. His style is not to inquire, explore or interrogate, in the fashion of academic studies today. It is to impart knowledge.”

Writing Today Found Study Century Fashion Style Position Ignorance Directors Research Aim Paris Tone Colour Quarters Academic Charming Impart Endearing Haughtiness

Author:Sebastian Smee

“But while ignorance can make you insensitive, familiarity can also numb. Entering the second half-century of an information age, our cumulative knowledge has changed the level of what appalls, what stuns, what shocks.”

Age Levels Half Century Information Changed Ignorance Perception Shock Entering Familiarity Numb Insensitive Information Age Cumulative

Author:Anna Quindlen

“There can be no more ancient and traditional American value than ignorance. English-only speakers brought it with them to this country three centuries ago, and they quickly imposed it on the Africans--who were not allowed to learn to read and write--and on the Native Americans, who were simply not allowed.”

Writing Country Values Three Century Ignorance Ancient Traditional Native Speakers Native American American Values

Book:WORST YEARS OF OUR LIVES

Source: WORST YEARS OF OUR LIVES

“Each such answer to the great question, invariably asserted by the followers of its propounder, if not by himself, to be complete and final, remains in high authority and esteem, it may be for one century, or it may be for twenty: but, as invariably, Time proves each reply to have been a mere approximation to the truth tolerable chiefly on account of the ignorance of those by whom it was accepted, and wholly intolerable when tested by the larger knowledge of their successors.”

Source: The Major Prose of Thomas Henry Huxley

“Unfortunately, 19th-century scientists were just as ready to jump to the conclusion that any guess about nature was an obvious fact, as were 17th-century sectarians to jump to the conclusion that any guess about Scripture was the obvious explanation . . . . and this clumsy collision of two very impatient forms of ignorance was known as the quarrel of Science and Religion.”

Two Facts Form Known Century Ignorance Ready Scientist Obvious Scripture Conclusion Explanation Science And Religion Quarrels Impatient 19th Century Clumsy Collision 17th Century

Author:Gilbert K. Chesterton

“Not only in peasant homes, but also in city skyscrapers, there lives alongside the twentieth century, the thirteenth. A hundred million people use electricity and still believe in the magic powers of signs and exorcisms . . . movie stars to mediums. Aviators who pilot miraculous mechanisms created by man's genius wear amulets on their sweaters. What inexhaustible reserves they possess of darkness, ignorance and savagery!”

“There's this Indian fellow who worked out a cycle like the idea of stone-age, bronze-age, only he did it on an Indian one. The cycle goes from nothing until now and 20th century and then on and right around the cycle until the people are really grooving and then just sinks back into ignorance until it gets back into the beginning again. So the 20th century is a fraction of that cycle, and how many of those cycles has it done yet? It's done as many as you think and all these times it's been through exactly the same things, and it'll be this again.”

People Thinking Ideas Done Age Century Ignorance Stones Fellows Indian Cycles Get Back 20th Century Fractions Begin Again Bronze Stone Age

Author:George Harrison

“The endless cycle of idea and action, Endless invention, endless experiment, Brings knowledge of motion, but not of stillness; Knowledge of speech, but not of silence; Knowledge of words, and ignorance of the Word. All our knowledge brings us nearer to our ignorance, All our ignorance brings us nearer to death, But nearness to death no nearer to God. Where is the Life we have lost in living? Where is the wisdom we have lost in knowledge? Where is the knowledge we have lost in information? The cycles of Heaven in twenty centuries Bring us farther from God and nearer to the Dust.”

Ideas Action Lost Heaven Silence Century Information Ignorance Speech Twenties Endless Experiments Invention Dust Cycles Stillness Ideas And Action

Book:The Complete Poems and Plays of T. S. Eliot

Source: The Complete Poems and Plays of T. S. Eliot

“Imagine the people who believe such things and who are not ashamed to ignore, totally, all the patient findings of thinking minds through all the centuries since the Bible was written. And it is these ignorant people, the most uneducated, the most unimaginative, the most unthinking among us, who would make themselves the guides and leaders of us all; who would force their feeble and childish beliefs on us; who would invade our schools and libraries and homes. I personally resent it bitterly.”

“The greatest of all the accomplishments of 20th century science has been the discovery of human ignorance”

Humans Has Beens Century Ignorance Discovery Accomplishment 20th Century

Author:Lewis Thomas

“How marvelous books are, crossing worlds and centuries, defeating ignorance and, finally, cruel time itself.”

World Book Century Ignorance Marvelous Crossings

Author:Gore Vidal

“For nearly a century, the moral relativism of science has given faith-based religion--that great engine of ignorance and bigotry--a nearly uncontested claim to being the only universal framework for moral wisdom. As a result, the most powerful societies on early spend their time debating issues like gay marriage when they should be focused on problems like nuclear proliferation, genocide, energy security, climate change, poverty, and failing schools.”

“Religious bondage shackles and debilitates the mind and unfits it for every noble enterprise.... 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 laity; in both, superstition, bigotry, and persecution.”

Mind Has Beens Religion Religious Christianity Atheism Century Ignorance Pride Constitution Fruit Atheist Noble Trials Enterprise Bigotry Establishment Superstitions Fifteen Secular Persecution Founding Bondage Church And State Separation Of Church And State Our Founding Fathers Founding Fathers Christian Philosophy Of Religion Us Founding Fathers Clergy Indolence Founding Fathers Religion Separation Between Church And State Shackles Founding Fathers Religious Religion God Federalist Founding Fathers Anti Religion Founding Fathers Of America Founding America Federalist Papers American Founding Fathers Founding Fathers Atheist Religious Philosophy Deism Christianity From Founding Fathers Religion And Politics Christian Atheist Religion Christian Philosophy And Religion Religion And Government Faith Religion Servility Religious Persecution Religious Bigotry Christianity And Government Christian Persecution

Author:James Madison

“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.”

Feels Humans Truth Science Pieces Century Ignorance Depth Intellect Significant Ignorant Contribution Scope Twentieth Century Confrontation Scientific Discovery Scientific Truth Discovery In Science

Book:A Long Line of Cells Collected Essays

Source: A Long Line of Cells Collected Essays

“Economic development over the past two centuries has taken most of humanity from lives that were brutal, ignorant and short, to personal health and security, material comfort and knowledge that were unknown to the elites of the wealthiest and most powerful societies in earlier times.”

“The greatest achievements in the science of this [twentieth] century are themselves the sources of more puzzlement than human beings have ever experienced. Indeed, it is likely that the twentieth century will be looked back at as the time when science provided the first close glimpse of the profundity of human ignorance. We have not reached solutions; we have only begun to discover how to ask questions.”

Firsts Humans Science Asks Human Beings Century Ignorance Source Achievement Solutions Accounts Ignorant Glimpse Twentieth Century Profundity Greatest Achievement

Author:Lewis Thomas

“What has been done is little-scarcely a beginning; yet it is much in comparison with the total blank of a century past. And our knowledge will, we are easily persuaded, appear in turn the merest ignorance to those who come after us. Yet it is not to be despised, since by it we reach up groping to touch the hem of the garment of the Most High.”

Knows Littles Has Beens Done Past Science Turns Knowledge Century Ignorance Astronomy Ignorant Comparison Blank Garments Despised Hem

Author:Agnes Mary Clerke

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