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Ignorance Quotes

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Ignorance Quotes

“I write ... in order to help ensure that the teeming millions in the New World, for whose sins Christ gave His life, do not continue to die in ignorance, but rather are brought to knowledge of God and thereby saved.”

World Writing Helping Order Dies Christ Sin Millions Atheism Ignorance Positive Atheism Saved New World Knowledge Of God

Author:Bartolome de las Casas

“The annals of the French Revolution prove that the knowledge of the few cannot counteract the ignorance of the many.... The light of philosophy, when it is confined to a small minority, points out the possessors as the victims rather than the illuminators of the multitude.”

Philosophy Light Atheism Ignorance Revolution Prove Victim Positive Atheism Minorities Multitudes Confined French Revolution

Book:The Friend: a series of essays ... First American, from the second London edition

Source: The Friend: a series of essays ... First American, from the second London edition

“Science may have come a long way, but as far as religion is concerned, we are first cousins to the !Kung tribesmen of the Kalahari Desert. Except for the garments, their deep religious trances might just as well be happening at a revival meeting or in the congregation of a fundamentalist TV preacher.... As we move further from the life of ignorance and superstition in which religion has its roots, we seem to need it more and more.... Why has religion become a force just when we'd have thought it would be losing ground to secularism?”

“Three key humanist virtues are courage, cognition, and caring - not dependence, ignorance, or insensitivity to the needs of others.”

Needs Three Virtue Atheism Ignorance Keys Caring Positive Atheism Humanist Dependence Cognition Needs Of Others Insensitivity

Author:Paul Kurtz

“Ignorance is the evil - knowledge will be the remedy. Knowledge not of what sort of beings we shall be hereafter, or what is beyond the skies, but a knowledge pertaining to terra firma, and we may have all the power, goodness and love that we have been taught belongs to God himself.”

May Has Beens Evil Sky Atheism Ignorance Taught Goodness And Love Positive Atheism Remedy Hereafter

Book:Mistress of herself: speeches and letters of Ernestine L. Rose, early women's rights leader

Source: Mistress of herself: speeches and letters of Ernestine L. Rose, early women's rights leader

“Towards orthodox religion, father's own attitude remained one of tolerance. He looked upon the New Testament as the noble story of a human being which, because of ignorance and the lack of printing presses, had become exaggerated. He maintained that religions served their purpose; some people depended on them all their lives to make them honest. Others did not need to be so held in line. But subjection to any church was a reflection on strength and character. You should be able to get from yourself what you had to go go church for.”

Source: The Autobiography of Margaret Sanger

“But honest men do not pretend to know; they are candid and sincere; they love the truth; they admit their ignorance, and they say, We do not know.”

Knows Men Atheism Honest Ignorance Positive Atheism Sincere Honest Man Candid

Book:The Works of Robert G. Ingersoll

Source: The Works of Robert G. Ingersoll

“The argument from design is ultimately an appeal to miraculous causes, i.e., causes that do not, and cannot, occur in the natural course of events. This is why an explanation via design is not a legitimate alternative to scientific and other naturalistic modes of explanation. To refer to a miraculous cause is to refer to something that is inherently unknowable, and this sanctuary of ignorance explains nothing at all. However much it may soothe the imagination of the ignorant, it does nothing to satisfy the understanding of a rational person.”

Source: Why Atheism?

“Our [Virginia's] act for freedom of religion is extremely applauded. The Ambassadors and ministers of the several nations of Europe resident at this court have asked me copies of it to send to their sovereigns, and it is inserted at full length in several books now in the press; among others, in the new Encyclopédie. I think it will produce considerable good even in those countries where ignorance, superstition, poverty and oppression of body and mind in every form, are so firmly settled on the mass of the people, that their redemption from them can never be hoped.”

Source: Memoir, Correspondence, and Miscellanies, from the Papers of Thomas Jefferson

“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.”

“It seems to me that if one had kept silence up to now regarding religion, people would still be submerged in the most grotesque and dangerous superstition ... regarding government, we would still be groaning under the bonds of feudal government ... regarding morals, we would still be having to learn what is virtue and what is vice. To forbid all these discussions, the only ones worthy of occupying a good mind, is to perpetuate the reign of ignorance and barbarism.”

“The worker who knows the cause of his misery, who understands the make-up of our iniquitous social and industrial system can do more for himself and his kind than Christ and the followers of Christ have ever done for humanity; certainly more than meek patience, ignorance, and submission have done.”

Knows Kind Done Humanity Social Causes Christ Can Do Atheism Ignorance Misery Workers Positive Atheism Followers Submission Meek

Book:Mother Earth, a Monthly Magazine Devoted to the Social Science and Literature

Source: Mother Earth, a Monthly Magazine Devoted to the Social Science and Literature

“To speak plainly and truthfully about the state of our world - to say, for instance, that the Bible and the Koran both contain mountains of life-destroying gibberish - is antithetical to tolerance as moderates currently conceive it. But we can no longer afford the luxury of such political correctness. We must finally recognize the price we are paying to maintain the iconography of our ignorance.”

World States Political Speak Atheism Ignorance Mountain Positive Atheism Tolerance Instance Luxury Our World Destroying Moderates Political Correctness Correctness Iconography

Author:Sam Harris

“The Church of Rome has made it an article of faith that no man can be saved out of their church, and all other religious sects approach this dreadful opinion in proportion to their ignorance, and the influence of ignorant or wicked priests.”

Source: The Works of John Adams, Second President of the United States: Diary, with passages from an autobiography. Notes of debates in the Continental Congress, in 1775 and 1776. Autobiography

“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.”

Two Simple Quality Fronts Ignorance Development Bears Simplicity Positive Atheism Contrary Discussion Two Things Open Mindedness Narrow Mindedness

Author:Lord Acton

“The agnostic does not simply say, "l do not know." He goes another step, and he says, with great emphasis, that you do not know. He insists that you are trading on the ignorance of others, and on the fear of others. He is not satisfied with saying that you do not know, -- he demonstrates that you do not know, and he drives you from the field of fact -- he drives you from the realm of reason -- he drives you from the light, into the darkness of conjecture -- into the world of dreams and shadows, and he compels you to say, at last, that your faith has no foundation in fact.”

Knows World Doe Reason Facts Dream Light Lasts Steps Darkness Fields Ignorance Shadow Foundation Positive Atheism Satisfied Realms Agnostic Emphasis Trading Agnosticism Conjecture

Author:Robert Green Ingersoll

“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.”