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• Ignorance: Lack of knowledge or information. Oxford Dictionary
• Ignorance: The state or fact of being ignorant: a lack of knowledge, education, or awareness.  Merriam Webster Dictionary
• Illusion,  Stupidity,  Knowledge,  Education, ,  Understanding

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Some argue that ignorance can be a kind of bliss

• Ignorance is the peace of life. Proverb
• Ignorance is the softest pillow on which a man can rest his head. Michel de Montaigne
• The pleasures of ignorance are as great, in their way, as the pleasures of knowledge. Aldous Huxley
• A person is never happy except at the price of some ignorance. Anatole France
• If ignorance is bliss, why aren’t there more happy people?
• Living is easy with eyes closed. John Lennon
• If ignorance is bliss, there should be more happy people. Victor Cousin
• Point me out the happy man and I will point you out either extreme egotism, selfishness, evil — or else an absolute ignorance. Graham Greene
• Ignorance is bliss. American Proverb
• Ignorance, if not bliss, often saves a good deal of time. Anthony Gilbert
• From ignorance our comfort flows, the only wretched are the wise.
• My whole career can be summed up with ‘Ignorance is bliss.’ When you do not know better, you do not really worry about failing. Jeff Foxworthy
• Sometimes not seeing things can be a blessing. August Strindberg
• Ignorance isn’t bliss, but sometimes ignorance makes it possible for us to sleep at night. Dean Koontz
• What you don’t know can’t hurt you. Proverb
• Ignorance of one’s misfortunes is clear gain. Euripides

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Ignorance can bring a false confidence that can at times even be useful

• Ah, how the seeds of cockiness blossom when soiled in ignorance. Steve Alten
• All you need in life is ignorance and confidence, and then success is sure. Mark Twain
• Boldness is a child of ignorance. Francis Bacon
• Confidence is ignorance. If you’re feeling cocky, it’s because there’s something you don’t know. Eoin Colfer
• Ignorance more frequently begets confidence than does knowledge: it is those who know little, and not those who know much, who so positively assert that this or that problem will never be solved by science. Charles Darwin
• The confidence of ignorance will always overcome the indecision of knowledge.
• To succeed in life, you need two things: ignorance and confidence. Mark Twain
• A person must have a certain amount of intelligent ignorance to get anywhere. Charles F. Kettering
• Ignorance is bold and knowledge reserved. Thucydides
• Self-confidence

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Many argue that ignorance extracts a heavy price

• If you think education is expensive, try ignorance. Derek Bok
• Ignorance is not bliss – it is oblivion. Philip Wylie
• Ignorance is not bliss; ignorance is impotence; it is fear; it is cruelty; it is all the things that make for unhappiness. Ingrid Holtby
• Ignorance is the night of the mind, a night without moon or star. Confucius
• The ignorance of the world leaves one at the mercy of its malice. William Hazlitt
• There is no slavery but ignorance. Robert Green Ingersoll
• A little learning is a dangerous thing, but a lot of ignorance is just as bad. Bob Edwards
• Whatever the cost of our libraries, the price is cheap compared to that of an ignorant nation. Walter Cronkite
• Where ignorance is our master, there is no possibility of real peace. The Dalai Lama
• Ignorance is ultimately the worst enemy of a people who want to be free. Jonathan Hennessey
• Our lives are universally shortened by our ignorance. Herbert Spencer
• Anything was better than nothing. Half-full was better than empty. Ignorance was the lowest form of humiliation and suffering. Becca Fitzpatrick
• Anyway, no drug, not even alcohol, causes the fundamental ills of society. If we’re looking for the source of our troubles, we shouldn’t test people for drugs, we should test them for stupidity, ignorance, greed and love of power. P.J. O’Rourke
• The unprepared will eventually be destroyed; ignorance is no hiding place. Tony Ballantyne
• If ignorance were enough to make things not exist, the world would be more like a lot of people think it is. But it’s not. And it’s not. William Gibson

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Ignorance can be damaging and destructive

• Knowledge slowly builds up what Ignorance in an hour pulls down. George Eliot
• There is nothing more frightful than ignorance in action. Johann Wolfgang von Goethe
• Nothing is worse than active ignorance. Johann Wolfgang von Goethe
• The most violent element in society is ignorance. Emma Goldman
• Ignorance and inconsideration are the two great causes of the ruin of mankind. John Tillotson
• Nothing in the world is more dangerous than sincere ignorance and conscientious stupidity. Martin Luther King Jr.
• It is a common sentence that Knowledge is power; but who hath duly considered or set forth the power of Ignorance? Knowledge slowly builds up what Ignorance in an hour pulls down. Knowledge, through patient and frugal centuries, enlarges discovery and makes record of it; Ignorance, wanting its day’s dinner, lights a fire with the record, and gives a flavour to its one roast with the burnt souls of many generations. George Eliot

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Ignorance is the parent of fear

• Fear always springs from ignorance. Ralph Waldo Emerson
• Fear is the lengthened shadow of ignorance. Arnold Glasow
• Ignorance is the parent of fear. Herman Melville
• We fear things in proportion to our ignorance of them. Christian Nevell Bovee
• Ignorance is the cause of fear. Seneca
• Since fear is mostly about ignorance, the best part is that it’s as temporary as you choose. Christine Comaford
• Fear

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Ignorance is the parent of poverty

• Poverty has many roots, but the tap root is ignorance. Lyndon B. Johnson
• Poverty

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Ignorance is the root of evil

• I believe that ignorance is the root of all evil. And that no one knows the truth. Molly Ivins
• Ignorance breeds monsters to fill up the vacancies of the soul that are unoccupied by the verities of knowledge. Horace Mann
• Ignorance, the root and stem of all evil. Plato
• Money is not the root of all evil…ignorance is the root of all evil. People do cruel and foolish things for money because they feel oppressed by a sense of lack. If people knew their power to generate wealth, they would never fight or hurt each other over money. Alan Cohen
• The evil that is in the world almost always comes of ignorance, and good intentions may do as much harm as malevolence if they lack understanding. Albert Camus
• The only good is knowledge and the only evil is ignorance. Socrates
• There is no darkness but ignorance. William Shakespeare
• What we call evil, it seems to me, is simply ignorance bumping its head in the dark. Henry Ford
• Ignorance is the curse of God; knowledge is the wing wherewith we fly to heaven. William Shakespeare
• Evil is not power; it is ignorance and misuse of good. James Allen
• Ignorance is the mother of all evils. Michel de Montaigne
• The darkest night is ignorance. Gautama Buddha
• Evil

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Ignorance is the root of prejudice

• Ignorance and prejudice are the handmaidens of propaganda. Our mission, therefore, is to confront ignorance with knowledge, bigotry with tolerance, and isolation with the outstretched hand of generosity. Racism can, will, and must be defeated. Kofi Annan
• Ignorance gives a sort of eternity to prejudice, and perpetuity to error. Robert Hall
• Ignorance is stubborn and prejudice is hard. Adlai E. Stevenson
• Prejudice and self-sufficiency naturally proceed from inexperience of the world, and ignorance of mankind. Joseph Addison
• Prejudice is a product of ignorance that hides behind barriers of tradition. Jasper Fforde
• Prejudice is the child of ignorance. William Hazlitt
• Prejudices are the chains forged by ignorance to keep men apart. Countess of Blessington
• There are only two ways to be quite unprejudiced and impartial. One is to be completely ignorant. The other is to be completely indifferent. Bias and prejudice are attitudes to be kept in hand, not attitudes to be avoided. Charles P. Curtis
• Your greatness is measured by your kindness; your education and intellect by your modesty; your ignorance is betrayed by your suspicions and prejudices, and your real calibre is measured by the consideration and tolerance you have for others. William J.H. Boetcker
• Inexperience can be overcome, ignorance can be enlightened, but prejudice will destroy you. Mercedes Lackey
• Prejudice

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Ignorance is at the root of cruelty

• Cruelty to dumb animals is one of the distinguishing vices of low and base minds. Wherever it is found, it is a certain mark of ignorance and meanness; a mark which all the external advantages of wealth, splendour, and nobility, cannot obliterate. It is consistent neither with learning nor true civility. William Jones
• Ignorant kindness may have the effect of cruelty; but to be angry with it as if it were direct cruelty would be an ignorant unkindness. George Eliot
• Ignorance is not bliss; ignorance is impotence; it is fear; it is cruelty; it is all the things that make for unhappiness. Ingrid Holtby
• It is only out of ignorance that people are cruel, because they really don’t think it will come back. Maya Angelou
• Cruelty

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Ignorance is the root of arrogance

• Arrogance is habitual to the ignorant. Persian Proverb
• Arrogance is inimical to prudential reasoning, to accepting that for all we know and learn we also accumulate ignorance of the questions we do not ask, the risks we do not and cannot comprehend. In short, arrogance is what causes us to ignore our fallibilities. Ziauddin Sardar
• That which inspires arrogance is ignorance, caused by the heart’s blindness. Saeed Malik
• The truest characters of ignorance are vanity, and pride and arrogance. Samuel Butler
• By ignorance is pride increased; Those most assume who know the least. John Gay
• The whole family of pride and ignorance are incestuous, and mutually beget each other. Charles Caleb Colton
• Fear and realisation of ignorance, strong medicines against stupid pride. Garth Nix
• The only thing worse than human ignorance is human pride in that ignorance. George Takei
• Arrogance,  Pride

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Ignorance of our own gifts is at the root of envy

• Envy comes from people’s ignorance of, or lack of belief in, their own gifts. Jean Vanier
• Envy is ignorance. Ralph Waldo Emerson
• Envy

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Here are more things that ignorance can lead to

• Ignorance is the mother of devotion. Dean Henry Cole
• Ignorance is the mother of presumption. Marie de Gournay
• Admiration is the daughter of ignorance. Benjamin Franklin
• Ignorance is the soil in which belief in miracles grows. Robert Green Ingersoll

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Ignorance is the prey of tyranny

• Ignorance has always been the weapon of tyrants; enlightenment the salvation of the free. Bill Richardson
• Ignorance is an evil weed, which dictators may cultivate among their dupes, but which no democracy can afford among its citizens. William Beveridge
• History shows that there is nothing so easy to enslave and nothing so hard to emancipate as ignorance, hence it becomes the double enemy of civilization. By its servility it is the prey of tyranny, and by its credulity it is the foe of enlightenment.  Lemuel K. Washburn
• The ignorance of the oppressed is strength for the oppressor. A.R. Bernard

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Ignorance dampens wonder – or does it?

• I can’t think of anything that excites a greater sense of childlike wonder than to be in a country where you are ignorant of almost everything. Bill Bryson
• It is not ignorance but knowledge which is the mother of wonder. Joseph Wood Krutch
• Wonder is the foundation of all philosophy, inquiry the progress, ignorance the end. Michel de Montaigne
• Wonder

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Ignorance is easily taken in

• Reason obeys itself; and ignorance submits to whatever is dictated to it. Thomas Paine

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Ignorance comes from never questioning your beliefs, opinions or knowledge

• The recipe for perpetual ignorance is: Be satisfied with your opinions and content with your knowledge. Elbert Hubbard
• You are not entitled to your opinion. You are entitled to your informed opinion. No one is entitled to be ignorant. Harlan Ellison
• A wise man makes his own decisions, an ignorant man follows public opinion. Chinese proverb
• It’s a fact—everyone is ignorant in some way or another. Ignorance is our deepest secret.  And it is one of the scariest things out there, because those of us who are most ignorant are also the ones who often don’t know it or don’t want to admit it.  Here is a quick test:  If you have never changed your mind about some fundamental tenet of your belief, if you have never questioned the basics, and if you have no wish to do so, then you are likely ignorant.  Before it is too late, go out there and find someone who, in your opinion, believes, assumes, or considers certain things very strongly and very differently from you, and just have a basic honest conversation.  It will do both of you good.  Vera Nazarian
• Consistency requires you to be as ignorant today as you were a year ago. Bernard Berenson
• Facts or opinions which are to pass through the hands of so many, to be misconceived by folly in one, and ignorance in another, can hardly have much truth left. Jane Austen
• Nothing is so firmly believed as that which is least known. Francis Jeffrey
• Belief,  Opinion,  Knowledge

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Ignorance comes from theoretical knowledge that is not applied or practised

• However much you are read in theory, if thou hast no practice, thou art ignorant. Muslih- uddin Sadi
• The essence of knowledge is, having it, to apply it; not having it, to confess your ignorance. Confucius
• Theory helps us to bear our ignorance of facts. George Santayana

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Ignorance comes from closing your ears to the feedback of others, especially friends

• If anyone can show me, and convince me, that I have acted or thought in error, I will gladly change; for I seek truth, and no one was ever injured by the truth. But people injure themselves if they live with self-deception and ignorance. Marcus Aurelius
• True friendship can afford true knowledge. It does not depend on darkness and ignorance. Henry David Thoreau

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… unless the feedback itself is ignorant

• Don’t let anyone’s ignorance, drama, or negativity stop you from being the best you can be. Marc and Angel Chernoff

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Ignorance comes from never taking a hard look at yourself

• The most fundamental aggression to ourselves, the most fundamental harm we can do to ourselves, is to remain ignorant by not having the courage and the respect to look at ourselves honestly and gently. Pema Chodron
• “In other living creatures the ignorance of themselves is nature, but in men it is a vice. Boethius
• The greatest pride, or the greatest despondency, is the greatest ignorance of one’s self. Baruch Spinoza
• Self-knowledge,  Self-awareness

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Ignorance comes from putting too much confidence in words

• In a sense, words are encyclopaedias of ignorance because they freeze perceptions at one moment in history and then insist we continue to use these frozen perceptions when we should be doing better. Edward de Bono
• There is no means by which men so powerfully elude their ignorance, disguise it from themselves and from others as by words. Gamaliel Bradford

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Ignorance comes from guilt and changelessness

• Guilt is not a response to anger; it is a response to one’s own actions or lack of action. If it leads to change then it can be useful, since it is then no longer guilt but the beginning of knowledge. Yet all too often, guilt is just another name for impotence, for defensiveness destructive of communication; it becomes a device to protect ignorance and the continuation of things the way they are, the ultimate protection for changelessness. Audre Lorde
• Guilt

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Ignorance comes from putting everything into a box

• There are people who are generic. They make generic responses and they expect generic answers. They live inside a box and they think people who don’t fit into their box are weird. But I’ll tell you what, generic people are the weird people. They are like genetically-manipulated plants growing inside a laboratory, like indistinguishable faces, like droids. Like ignorance. C. JoyBell C.

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Most of all, ignorance, and the death of knowledge, comes from the illusion of knowledge

• The great obstacle of progress is not ignorance, but the illusion of knowledge. Rod Beckwith
• The greatest enemy of knowledge is not ignorance, it is the illusion of knowledge. Stephen Hawking
• The greatest obstacle to discovering the shape of the earth, the continents, and the oceans was not ignorance but the illusion of knowledge. Daniel J. Boorstin
• The greatest obstacle to discovery is not ignorance – it is the illusion of knowledge. Daniel J. Boorstin
• Illusion

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More dangerous that ignorance is knowledge that is false

• Beware of false knowledge; it is more dangerous than ignorance. George Bernard Shaw
• Ignorance is preferable to error; and he is less remote from truth who believes nothing, than he who believes what is wrong. Thomas Jefferson
• Ignorance is a blank sheet, on which we may write; but error is a scribbled one, on which we must first erase. Charles Caleb Colton

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Sometimes we invest in ignorance because we prefer illusion

• A great deal of intelligence can be invested in ignorance when the need for illusion is deep. Saul Bellow
• If most of us remain ignorant of ourselves, it is because self-knowledge is painful and we prefer the pleasures of illusion. Aldous Huxley
• Now I believe I can hear the philosophers protesting that it can only be misery to live in folly, illusion, deception and ignorance, but it isn’t – it’s human. Desiderius Erasmus
• Time after time, history demonstrates that when people don’t want to believe something, they have enormous skills of ignoring it altogether. Jim Butcher
• Most ignorance is vincible ignorance. We don’t know because we don’t want to know. Aldous Huxley
• The blind see what they want to see. Dan Brown, The Da Vinci Code

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Here are some more sources and signs of ignorance

• It is just as cowardly to judge an absent person as it is wicked to strike a defenseless one. Only the ignorant and narrow- minded gossip, for they speak of persons instead of things. Lawrence G. Lovasik
• The highest form of ignorance is to reject something you know nothing about. Wayne Dyer
• All effort is ignorance. Francis Lucille
• The greater the ignorance the greater the dogmatism. William Osler
• We allow our ignorance to prevail upon us and make us think we can survive alone, alone in patches, alone in groups, alone in races, even alone in genders. Maya Angelou
• The last word in ignorance is the man who says of an animal or plant: ‘What good is it?” Aldo Leopold
• The mark of your ignorance is the depth of your belief in injustice and tragedy. What the caterpillar calls the end of the world, the master calls a butterfly. Richard Bach
• It is the eye of ignorance that assigns a fixed and unchangeable color to every object; beware of this stumbling block. Paul Gauguin
• The ignorant work for their own profit; the wise work for the welfare of the world. Bhagavad-Gita

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Ignorance is voluntary and we have no excuse for it

• A man is responsible for his ignorance. Milan Kundera
• Ignorance is a voluntary misfortune. Nicholas Ling
• Ignorance, when it is voluntary, is criminal; and he may be properly charged with evil who refused to learn how he might prevent it. Samuel Johnson
• Ignorance is no excuse, it’s the real thing. Irene Peter
• A man is responsible for his ignorance. Milan Kundera

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End ignorance by admitting you don’t know and asking questions

• The person who confesses ignorance shows it once; the person who conceals it, shows it many times. Proverb
• ‘How do you know so much about everything?’ was asked of a very wise and intelligent man; and the answer was ‘By never being afraid or ashamed to ask questions as to anything of which I was ignorant. John Abbott
• My greatest strength as a consultant is to be ignorant and ask a few questions. Peter Drucker
• All you’ve got to do is own up to your ignorance honestly, and you’ll find people who are eager to fill your head with information. Walt Disney
• Better to ask a question than to remain ignorant. Proverb
• Questions

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There is no shame in not knowing

• … there is no shame in not knowing. The problem arises when irrational thought and attendant behavior fill the vacuum left by ignorance. Neil deGrasse Tyson
• He must be very ignorant for he answers every question he is asked. Voltaire
• I know nothing except the fact of my ignorance. Socrates
• It is better to confess ignorance than provide it. Homer Hickam
• Be not ashamed to own thy ignorance of some things. Edward Counsel

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After all, we’re all ignorant, just on different subjects

• To specialize is to brush one tooth. When a person specializes he channels all of his energies through one narrow conduit; he knows one thing extremely well and is ignorant of almost everything else. Tom Robbins
• Everybody is ignorant, only on different subjects. Will Rogers

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Admission of ignorance is the first step to knowledge

• Admission of ignorance is often the first step in our education. Stephen Covey
• Fullness of knowledge always and necessarily means some understanding of the depths of our ignorance and that is always conducive to both humility and reverence. Robert A. Milikan
• I am not ashamed to confess I am ignorant of what I do not know. Marcus Tullius Cicero
• Real knowledge is to know the extent of one’s ignorance. Confucius
• The doorstep to the temple of wisdom is a knowledge of our own ignorance. Benjamin Franklin
• The little I know I owe to my ignorance. Sacha Guitry
• To be conscious that you are ignorant is a great step to knowledge. Benjamin Disraeli
• Wisdom tends to grow in proportion to one’s awareness of one’s ignorance. Anthony de Mello
• The essence of knowledge is, having it, to apply it; not having it, to confess your ignorance. Confucius
• Ignorance lies at the bottom of all human knowledge, and the deeper we penetrate, the nearer we arrive unto it. Charles Caleb Colton

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Not ignorance, but ignorance of ignorance is the death of knowledge

• Not ignorance, but ignorance of ignorance is the death of knowledge. Alfred North Whitehead
• To be ignorant of one’s ignorance is the malady of the ignorant. Amos Bronson Alcott
• True wisdom is less presuming than folly. The wise man doubteth often, and changeth his mind; the fool is obstinate, and doubteth not; he knoweth all things but his own ignorance. Akhenaton
• The trouble with many of us is that at the earlier stages of life we think we know everything – or to put it more usefully, we are often unaware of the scope and structure of our ignorance. Thomas Pynchon

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The more we know, the more ignorant we realise we are

• The small part of ignorance that we arrange and classify we give the name of knowledge. Ambrose Bierce
• All our knowledge brings us nearer to our ignorance. T. S. Eliot

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The world has suffered far less from ignorance than from pretensions to knowledge

• 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. Daniel J Boorstin

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Knowledge may cause problems but it is always preferable to ignorance

• Suppose that we are wise enough to learn and know – and yet not wise enough to control our learning and knowledge, so that we use it to destroy ourselves? Even if that is so, knowledge remains better than ignorance. Isaac Asimov
• It is no good to try to stop knowledge from going forward. Ignorance is never better than knowledge. Enrico Fermi
• If knowledge can create problems, it is not through ignorance that we can solve them. Isaac Asimov

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However, sometimes ignorance is better than a little knowledge

• Ignorance is better than knowledge misapplied. Norman Macdonald
• Better be ignorant of a matter than half know it. Publilius Syrus

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End ignorance by being willing to learn …

• Let ignorance talk as it will, learning has its value. Jean de La Fontaine
• Being ignorant is not so much a shame, as being unwilling to learn. Benjamin Franklin
• Mankind have a great aversion to intellectual labor; but even supposing knowledge to be easily attainable, more people would be content to be ignorant than would take even a little trouble to acquire it. Samuel Johnson
• Learning

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… especially from mistakes caused by your ignorance …

• By ignorance we mistake, and by mistakes we learn. Proverb
• You’re afraid of making mistakes. Don’t be. Mistakes can be profited by. Man, when I was young I shoved my ignorance in people’s faces. They beat me with sticks. By the time I was forty my blunt instrument had been honed to a fine cutting point for me. If you hide your ignorance, no one will hit you and you’ll never learn. Ray Bradbury

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… but keep in mind that a learned fool is more a fool than an ignorant fool

• A learned fool is more a fool than an ignorant fool.
• A learned blockhead is a greater blockhead than an ignorant one. Benjamin Franklin
• An erudite fool is a greater fool than an ignorant fool. Jean Baptiste Moliére
• Entire ignorance is not so terrible or extreme an evil and is far from being the greatest of all; too much cleverness and too much learning, accompanied with ill bringing-up, are far more fatal. Plato
• Without education, we are in a horrible and deadly danger of taking educated people seriously. G.K. Chesterton
• Beware of the man who works hard to learn something, learns it, and finds himself no wiser than before. Kurt Vonnegut
• Men are born ignorant, not stupid. They are made stupid by education. Bertrand Russell

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The more we learn and know, the more we realise our ignorance

• The greater our knowledge increases, the greater our ignorance unfolds. John Fitzgerald Kennedy
• The learned man knows that he is ignorant. Victor Hugo
• The learning and knowledge that we have, is, at the most, but little compared with that of which we are ignorant. Plato
• The more we study, the more we discover our ignorance. Percy Bysshe Shelley
• We live on an island surrounded by a sea of ignorance. As our island of knowledge grows, so does the shore of our ignorance. John Archibald Wheeler
• Real knowledge is to know the extent of one’s ignorance. Confucius
• When you come to see you are not as wise today as you thought you were yesterday, you are wiser today. Anthony de Mello
• Education is a progressive discovery of our own ignorance. Will Durant

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End ignorance by reading

• No matter how busy you may think you are, you must find time for reading, or surrender yourself to self- chosen ignorance. Confucius

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End ignorance by turning it into open-minded curiosity

• Curiosity is a willing, a proud, an eager confession of ignorance. Leonard Rubenstein
• Seize the moment of excited curiosity on any subject to solve your doubts; for if you let it pass, the desire may never return, and you may remain in ignorance. William Wirt
• Genuine ignorance is… profitable because it is likely to be accompanied by humility, curiosity, and open mindedness; whereas ability to repeat catch-phrases, cant terms, familiar propositions, gives the conceit of learning and coats the mind with varnish waterproof to new ideas. John Dewey
• Curiosity

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End ignorance through travel

• Travel brings wisdom only to the wise. It renders the ignorant more ignorant than ever. Joe Abercrombie
• I can’t think of anything that excites a greater sense of childlike wonder than to be in a country where you are ignorant of almost everything. Bill Bryson
• Travel

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End ignorance through understanding

• All of us must cross the line between ignorance and insight many times before we truly understand. David B. Hawkins
• I’d take the awe of understanding over the awe of ignorance any day. Douglas Adams
• Understanding

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The ignorant are often the first to treat others with contempt

• The apparent foolishness of others is but too frequently our own ignorance. Arthur Helps
• The insolence of the vulgar is in proportion to their ignorance. They treat everything with contempt which they do not understand. William Hazlitt

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Isn’t if funny how often it is the ignorant who have the most to say?

• There are many who talk on from ignorance rather than from knowledge, and who find the former an inexhaustible fund of conversation. William Hazlitt
• I prefer tongue-tied knowledge to ignorant loquacity. Marcus Tullius Cicero
• You may have noticed that while knowledge often listens, ignorance tends to speak incessantly
• When ignorance gets started it knows no bounds. Will Rogers
• Your ignorance cramps my conversation. Anthony Hope
• The reason there’s so much ignorance is that those who have it are so eager to share it. Frank A. Clark

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Ignorance can be extremely difficult to argue with and silence may be the best option

• It is impossible to defeat an ignorant man in argument. William G. McAdoo
• 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. Lord Acton
• Against logic there is no armour like ignorance. Laurence Peter
• It is impossible to make people understand their ignorance, for it requires knowledge to perceive it; and, therefore, he that can perceive it hath it not. Jeremy Taylor
• Ignorance never settles a question. Benjamin Disraeli
• There is no reply to the ignorant like keeping silence. Proverb
• It is as useless to fight against the interpretations of ignorance as to whip the fog. George Eliot

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The best way to reveal your ignorance is to be drawn into an argument

• Discussion is an exchange of knowledge; an argument an exchange of ignorance. Robert Quillen
• Whenever you argue with another wiser than yourself in order that others may admire your wisdom, they will discover your ignorance. Saadi
• Behind every argument is someone’s ignorance. Robert Benchley

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Ignorance and stupidity go hand in hand – or do they?

• Stupid is forever, ignorance can be fixed. Don Wood
• Stupidity has a certain charm – ignorance does not. Frank Zappa
• Ignorance is not stupidity, but it might as well be. And I do not like feeling stupid. Lois McMaster Bujold
• Only ignorance excuses stupidity. Nalini Singh
• Ignorance is innocence – stupidity comes with experience.
• Stupidity is the deliberate cultivation of ignorance. William Gaddis
• Ignorance is not lack of intelligence, nor knowledge a proof of genius. Luc De Clapiers
• We are all born ignorant, but one must work hard to remain stupid. Benjamin Franklin
• Men are born ignorant, not stupid. They are made stupid by education. Bertrand Russell
• Stupidity

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Ignorance and innocence go hand in hand – or do they?

• Ignorance is not innocence but sin. Robert Browning
• Ignorance is innocence – stupidity comes with experience.
• Innocence plays in the backyard of ignorance. Proverb
• It’s innocence when it charms us, ignorance when it doesn’t. Mignon McLaughlin
• Ignorance and Innocence are twins in the same cradle. Ignorance is never reared, and her death is either the death of Innocence also, or her immortality. Richard Garnett

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Some argue democracy is a form of government by popular ignorance

• Democracy: A form of government by popular ignorance.    Elbert Hubbard
• Democracy: The belief in the collective wisdom of individual ignorance. Carlyle Thomas
• The known propensity of a democracy is to licentiousness which the ambitious call, and the ignorant believe to be liberty. Fisher Ames
• Never forget public ignorance is the government’s best friend.
•  Democracy,  Politics

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Others argue that ignorance is the last thing a democracy can afford

• Ignorance of one voter in a democracy impairs the security of all. John Fitzgerald Kennedy
• Ignorance is an evil weed, which dictators may cultivate among their dupes, but which no democracy can afford among its citizens. William Beveridge
• No nation is permitted to live in ignorance with impunity. Thomas Jefferson
• There is little hope for us until we become toughminded enough to break loose from the shackles of prejudice, half- truths, and downright ignorance. The shape of the world today does not permit us the luxury of softmindedness. A nation or a civilization that continues to produce softminded men purchases its own spiritual death on an installment plan. Martin Luther King Jr.

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Science tries hard to dispel ignorance

• True science teaches, above all, to doubt and to be ignorant. Miguel de Unamuno
• Science is the topography of ignorance. Oliver Wendell Holmes, Sr.
• Science replaces private prejudice with public, verifiable evidence. Richard Dawkins
• The greatest of all the accomplishments of 20th century science has been the discovery of human ignorance. Lewis Thomas
• Science is the father of knowledge, but opinion breeds ignorance. Hippocrates
• Science is the belief in the ignorance of the experts. Richard Feynman
• So long as the mother, Ignorance, lives, it is not safe for Science, the offspring, to divulge the hidden cause of things. Johannes Kepler
• There are in fact two things, science and opinion; the former begets knowledge, the latter ignorance. Hippocrates
• It is an essential part of the scientific enterprise to admit ignorance, even to exult in ignorance as a challenge to future conquests. Richard Dawkins
• Science

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Wisdom requires us to be selectively ignorant

• Protect me from knowing what I don’t need to know. Protect me from even knowing that there are things to know that I don’t know. Protect me from knowing that I decided not to know about the things that I decided not to know about. Amen. Lord, lord, lord. Protect me from the consequences of the above prayer. Douglas Adams
• There are many things of which a wise man might wish to be ignorant. Ralph Waldo Emerson
• Ignorance of certain subjects is a great part of wisdom. Hugo De Groot
• I would far rather be ignorant than knowledgeable of evil. Aeschylus
• Have the courage to be ignorant of a great number of things, in order to avoid the calamity of being ignorant of everything. Sydney Smith
• Wisdom

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The ego comes from being ignorant of our true selves

• Throughout the history of humanity, it has been said that the self we know — the individual ego – – is a very limited form of identity. Ignorant of our true selves we derive a false sense of identity from what we have, or what we do — from our possessions, our role in the world, how others see us, etc. Because the world on which it is based is continually changing, this derived sense of identity is always under threat, and our attempts to maintain it are responsible for much of our “self-centered” behaviour.  Peter Russell

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Spiritual enlightenment is about the end to ignorance and illusion …

• Enlightenment is not about becoming divine. Instead it’s about becoming more fully human. . . It is the end of ignorance.  Lama Surya Das
• Rise above the deceptions and temptations of the mind. This is your duty. You are born for this only; all other duties are self- created and self- imposed owing to ignorance. Sivananda Saraswati
• The spiritual journey does not consist of arriving at a new destination where a person gains what he did not have, or becomes what he is not. It consists in the dissipation of one’s own ignorance concerning oneself and life, and the gradual growth of that understanding which begins the spiritual awakening. The finding of God is a coming to one’s self.  Aldous Huxley
• The ultimate standpoint of Zen is that we have been led astray through ignorance to find a split in our own being, that there was from the very beginning no need for a struggle between the finite and the infinite, that the peace we are seeking so eagerly after has been there all the time. T. Suzuki
• With the ending of ignorance and the arising of knowledge he clings neither to sense- pleasures, nor does he cling to views, nor to precepts and vows, nor to a Self-doctrine. Buddha
• Ignorance is God’s prison. Knowing is God’s palace. Rumi

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… often attained through meditation

• Meditation brings wisdom – lack of meditation leaves ignorance. Know well what leads you forward and what holds you back and choose the path that leads to wisdom. Buddha
• What’s encouraging about meditation is that even if we shut down, we can no longer shut down in ignorance. We see very clearly that we’re closing off. That in itself begins to illuminate the darkness of ignorance. Pema Chodron
• Meditation

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… and letting go of attachment

• All of our miseries are nothing but attachment. Our whole ignorance and darkness is a strange combination of a thousand and one attachments. And we are attached to things which will be taken away by the time of death, or even perhaps before. You may be very much attached to money but you can go bankrupt tomorrow. You may be very much attached to your power and position… but they are like soap bubbles. Today they are here, tomorrow not even a trace will be left.  Osho
• Non-attachment

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• To surrender to ignorance and call it God has always been premature, and it remains premature today. Isaac Asimov
• Our notions of God are tinged by our own characters and ignorance. Austin O’Malley
• Ignorance is the curse of God; knowledge is the wing wherewith we fly to heaven. William Shakespeare
• Ignorance is God’s prison. Knowing is God’s palace. Rumi
• God

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Even the ignorant have things to teach

• Speak your truth quietly and clearly; and listen to others, even to the dull and the ignorant, they too have their story. Max Ehrman
• I have never met a man so ignorant that I couldn’t learn something from him. Galileo Galilei

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Mystery is another name for ignorance – or is it?

• Our ignorance can be divided into problems and mysteries. When we face a problem, we may not know its solution, but we have insight, increasing knowledge, and an inkling of what we are looking for. When we face a mystery, however, we can only stare in wonder and bewilderment, not knowing what an explanation would even look like. Noam Chomsky
• Mystery is not founded in ignorance, mystery is founded in imagination. Spencer Baker
• Mystery is another name for our ignorance; if we were omniscient, all would be perfectly plain. Tryon Edwards
• Mystery

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Truth will always be truth, regardless of ignorance

• Truth is by nature self-evident. As soon as you remove the cobwebs of ignorance that surround it, it shines clear. Mahatma Gandhi
• Truth will always be truth, regardless of lack of understanding, disbelief or ignorance. Clement Stone
• The truth is incontrovertible, malice may attack it, ignorance may deride it, but in the end; there it is. Winston Churchill
• Facts do not cease to exist because they are ignored. Aldous Huxley
• Truth

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Better ignorance with love than wisdom without it

• Ignorance and bungling with love are better than wisdom and skill without. Henry David Thoreau
• Love

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Sometimes it’s best not to reveal your ignorance …

• It is better to be silent and thought to be ignorant then to open one’s mouth and remove all doubt. R. G. Risch
• It is better to conceal one’s knowledge than to reveal one’s ignorance. Spanish Proverb

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… while sometimes it best not to reveal your knowledge

• Even knowledge has to be in the fashion, and where it is not, it is wise to affect ignorance. Baltasar Gracian

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• A jury is a group of twelve people of average ignorance. Herbert Spencer
• A learned blockhead is a greater blockhead than an ignorant one. Benjamin Franklin
• A library is like an island in the middle of a vast sea of ignorance, particularly if the library is very tall and the surrounding area has been flooded. Daniel Handler
• A little ignorance can go a long way. Gerrold’s Law
• A little learning is a dangerous thing but a lot of ignorance is just as bad. Bob Edwards
• A newspaper is a device for making the ignorant more ignorant and the crazy crazier. L. Mencken
• Against logic there is no armor like ignorance. Laurence J. Peter
• All I know is just what I read in the papers, and that’s an alibi for my ignorance. Will Rogers
• All you need in this life is ignorance and confidence and then success is sure. Mark Twain
• Americans are benevolently ignorant about Canada while Canadians are malevolently well informed about the United States. John Bartlet Brebner
• Argument: An exchange of ignorance.
• Confidence is ignorance. If you’re feeling cocky, it’s because there’s something you don’t know. Eoin Colfer
• Confucius say education is the path from cocky ignorance to miserable uncertainty. Confucius
• Consistence requires you to be as ignorant today as you were a year ago. Bernard Berenson
• Curiosity was framed. Ignorance killed the cat.
• Democracy means that my ignorance is just as good as your knowledge. Isaac Asimov
• Democracy: A form of government by popular ignorance.
• Democracy: The belief in the collective wisdom of individual ignorance.  Elbert Hubbard
• Dopeler effect: The tendency of stupid ideas to seem smarter when they come at you rapidly.
• Education: The path from cocky ignorance to miserable uncertainty. Mark Twain
• Gross ignorance is 144 times worse than ordinary ignorance. Bennett Cerf
• He was distinguished for ignorance; for he had only one idea and that was wrong. Benjamin Disraeli
• He was so learned that he could name a horse in nine languages; so ignorant that he bought a cow to ride on. Benjamin Franklin
• I do not approve of anything which tampers with natural ignorance. Oscar Wilde
• I have never found in a long experience of politics that criticism is ever inhibited by ignorance. Harold Macmillan
• I told one player ‘Son I can’t understand it with you. Is it ignorance or apathy?’ He said ‘Coach I don’t know and I don’t care.’ Frank Layden
• I would rather have my ignorance than another man’s knowledge, because I have got so much more of it. Mark Twain
• I’m glad to see you’re not letting your education get in the way of your ignorance.
• If ignorance ever goes to $40 a barrel I want drilling rights on George Bush’s head. Jim Hightower
• If ignorance is bliss, then I’d hope to, one day, be multi orgasmic. Aaron Howard
• If ignorance is bliss, this is Eden. Shelley Long
• If ignorance is bliss, why aren’t more people jumping up and down for joy?
• If ignorance is bliss, why aren’t there more happy people?
• If you think that education is expensive, try ignorance. Derek Bok
• Ignorance is a right! Education is eroding one of the few democratic freedoms remaining to us. Christopher Andreae
• Ignorance is like the itch — the less you have of it the better off you are. Harry Mendelson
• Ignorant people in preppy clothes are more dangerous to America than oil embargoes. S. Naipaul
• Ignoranus: A person who’s both stupid and an asshole.
• Is it ignorance or apathy? Hey, I don’t know and I don’t care. Jimmy Buffett
• Is sloppiness in speech caused by ignorance or apathy? I don’t know and I don’t care.   William Safire
• It is an infantile superstition of the human spirit that virginity would be thought a virtue and not the barrier that separates ignorance from knowledge. Voltaire
• It is impossible to defeat an ignorant man in argument. William McAdoo
• It’s innocence when it charms us, ignorance when it doesn’t. Mignon McLaughlin
• Learning: The kind of ignorance distinguishing the studious. Ambrose Bierce
• My ignorance of science is such that if anyone mentioned copper nitrate I should think he was talking about policemen’s overtime. Frederick Donald Coggan
• Nowadays a parlor maid as ignorant as Queen Victoria was when she came to the throne would be classed as mentally defective. George Bernard Shaw
• A daughter of Hope and Fear, explaining to Ignorance the nature of the Unknowable. Ambrose Bierce
• Ridiculous stereotypes often make people very ignorant towards other nationalities. For example, I’m in good shape intelligent and I don’t have sex with my cousins and yet still people assume I’m American. Stewart Francis
• The small part of ignorance that we arrange and classify we give the name of knowledge. Ambrose Bierce
• The trouble ain’t that people are ignorant; it’s that they know so much that ain’t so. Josh Billings
• The trouble with ignorance is that it picks up confidence as it goes along.
• The trouble with our liberal friends is not that they’re ignorant; it’s just that they know so much that isn’t so. Ronald Reagan
• There are four things that hold back human progress – ignorance, stupidity, committees and accountants. Charles J.C. Lyall
• To succeed in life, you need two things: ignorance and confidence. Mark Twain
• We are all born ignorant but one must work hard to remain stupid. Benjamin Franklin
• When I was a boy of fourteen, my father was so ignorant I could hardly stand to have the old man around. But when I got to be twenty- one, I was astonished at how much the old man had learned in seven years. Josh Billings
• Where ignorance is bliss it’s foolish to borrow your neighbor’s newspaper. Frank  …Kin’ Hubbard
• Why waste time learning, when ignorance is instantaneous? Bill Watterson
• You can swim all day in the Sea of Knowledge and still come out completely dry. Most people do.  Norman Juster
• You know everybody is ignorant only on different subjects. Will Rogers

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Lines to use when you want to insult someone’s ignorance

• His ignorance is encyclopedic. Abba Eban
• If ignorance is bliss, then you must be multi orgasmic.
• You could swim in the Sea of Knowledge and still come out completely dry.
• Ignoranus: A person who’s both stupid and an asshole.
• I’d tried to straighten him out, but there’s only so much you can do for a person who thinks Auschwitz is a brand of beer. David Sedaris
• He knows nothing; and he thinks he knows everything. That points clearly to a political career. George Bernard Shaw
• If ignorance were bliss, he’d be a blister.
• His ignorance covers the world like a blanket, and there’s scarcely a hole in it anywhere. Mark Twain
• Ignorance is a lot like alcohol: the more you have of it, the less you are able to see its effect on you. Jay M. Bylsma
• If ignorance is bliss, then you must be multi orgasmic.
• If ignorance is bliss, you must be the happiest person on earth.
• His ignorance covers the world like a blanket and there’s scarcely a hole in it anywhere. Mark Twain
• Your ignorance cramps my conversation. Bob Hope

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