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Ignorance Quotes

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Ignorance Quotes

“A lot of being a poet consists of willed ignorance. If you woke up from your trance and realized the nature of the life-threatening and dignity-destroying precipice you were walking along, you would switch into actuarial sciences immediately.”

Ifs Poetry Ignorance Poet Walking Dignity Destroying Threatening Trance Precipice

Author:Margaret Atwood

“The notion that science does not concern itself with first causes - that it leaves the field to theology or metaphysics, and confines itself to mere effects - this notion has no support in the plain facts. If it could, science would explain the origin of life on earth at once - and there is every reason to believe that it will do so on some not too remote tomorrow. To argue that gaps in knowledge which will confront the seeker must be filled, not by patient inquiry, but by intuition or revelation, is simply to give ignorance a gratuitous and preposterous dignity.”

“Let us hear the dangers of thralldom to our consciences from ignorance, extreme poverty, and dependence; in short, from civil and political slavery. Let us see delineated before us the true map of man. Let us hear the dignity of his nature, and the noble rank he holds among the works of God-that consenting to slavery is a sacrilegious breach of trust, as offensive in the sight of God as it is derogatory from our own honor or interest or happiness-and that God Almighty has promulgated from heaven liberty, peace, and goodwill to man!”

“To argue that the gaps in knowledge which confront the seeker must be filled, not by patient inquiry, but by intuition or revelation, is simply to give ignorance a gratuitous and preposterous dignity.”

Giving Ignorance Dignity Filled Patient Intuition Arguing Revelations Gaps Inquiry Seekers

Author:H. L. Mencken

“When you have your own bus, then you have dignity. When you have your own school, you have dignity. When you have your own country, you have dignity.When you have something of your own, you have dignity. But whenever you are begging for a chance to participate in that which belongs to someone else, or use that which belongs to someone else, on an equal basis with the owner, that's not dignity. That's ignorance.”

Country Use School Chance Ignorance Equal Dignity Bases Owners Bus Begging

Author:Malcolm X

“The general impression is that fifteen year-old Dolly remains morbidly uninterested in sexual matters, or to be exact, represses her curiosity in order to save her ignorance and self-dignity.”

Years Self Matter Order Ignorance Dignity Remains Curiosity Impression Fifteen Fifteen Years Uninterested Fifteen Years Old

Book:The Annotated Lolita: Revised and Updated

Source: The Annotated Lolita: Revised and Updated

“the meeting between ignorance and knowledge, between brutality and culture - it begins in the dignity with which we treat the dead”

Culture Ignorance Dignity Treats Meetings Brutality

Book:DUNE

Source: DUNE

“We fly, but we have not 'conquered' the air. Nature presides in all her dignity, permitting us the study and the use of such of her forces as we may understand. It is when we presume to intimacy, having been granted only tolerance, that the harsh stick fall across our impudent knuckles and we rub the pain, staring upward, startled by our ignorance.”

May Use Pain Fall Force Nature Study Air Ignorance Dignity Sticks Tolerance Granted Intimacy Staring Harsh Knuckles

Book:The Illustrated West with the Night

Source: The Illustrated West with the Night

“Slavery is but half abolished, emancipation is but half completed, while millions of freemen with votes in their hands are left without education. Justice to them, the welfare of the States in which they live, the safety of the whole Republic, the dignity of the elective franchise, - all alike demand that the still remaining bonds of ignorance shall be unloosed and broken, and the minds as well as the bodies of the emancipated go free.”

Source: Addresses and Speeches on Various Occasions: 1878-1886

“Public Opinion... an attempt to organize the ignorance of the community, and to elevate it to the dignity of physical force.”

Force Community Opinion Ignorance Dignity Organize Public Opinion Physical Force

Book:The Wit and Humor of Oscar Wilde

Source: The Wit and Humor of Oscar Wilde