Realisation and admission of ignorance is the first step to knowledge and discovery

• 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
• 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
• Admitting one’s ignorance is the first step in acquiring knowledge. Socrates
• Knowing ignorance is strength. Laozi
• The realization of ignorance is the first act of knowing. – Jean Toomer
• True wisdom comes to each of us when we realize how little we understand about life, ourselves, and the world around us. Socrates
• To admit ignorance is the highest knowledge. It is the necessary condition for all learning. Tom Spanbauer
• 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
• By ignorance the truth is known. Henry Suso
• Ignorance is the beginning of knowledge; knowledge is the beginning of wisdom; wisdom is the awareness of ignorance. William Rotsler
• The first step towards knowledge is to accept your own ignorance. Joseph Delaney
• A wise ignorance is an essential part of knowledge. Plato

.

Knowledge of the extent of our ignorance is the start of wisdom

• The doorstep to the temple of wisdom is a knowledge of our own ignorance. Benjamin Franklin
• Wisdom tends to grow in proportion to one’s awareness of one’s ignorance. Anthony de Mello
• The greatest wisdom often consist in ignorance. Baltasar Gracian
• To realize that our knowledge is ignorance, this is a noble insight. To regard our ignorance as knowledge, this is mental sickness. Only when we are sick of the sickness shall we cease to be sick. The Sage is not sick, being sick of sickness; This is the secret of health. Laozi
• The true Wisdom is in recognizing our own ignorance. Socrates
• I am the wisest man alive, for I know one thing, and that is that I know nothing. Plato
• The only true wisdom is in knowing you know nothing. Socrates
• To admit ignorance is to exhibit wisdom. Ashley Montagu
• All that we know is nothing, we are merely crammed wastepaper baskets, unless we are in touch with that which laughs at all our knowing. H. Lawrence
• A fool who recognises his own ignorance is thereby in fact a wise man, but a fool who considers himself wise – that is what one really calls a fool. Gautama Buddha
• Recognizing your own ignorance is the first step toward wisdom. Laurence Overmire
• The Socratic maxim that the recognition of our ignorance is the beginning of wisdom has profound significance for our understanding of society. Friedrich August von Hayek

.

True knowledge is to know just how little we know

• To know is to know that you know nothing. That is the meaning of true knowledge. Confucius
• The only thing I know is that I know nothing. Socrates
• To know, is to know that you know nothing. Socrates
• I know nothing except the fact of my ignorance. Socrates
• To know, is to know that you know nothing. That is the meaning of true knowledge. For a man who claims to have knowledge, while actually knowing nothing, is less smarter than you, who claim to know nothing. Socrates
• They are so knowing, that they know nothing. Terence
• Nobody knows anything, but I, knowing nothing, am the smartest man in the world. Socrates
• To know, is to know that you know nothing. That is the meaning of true knowledge. When you say something, say what you know. When you don’t know something, say you don’t know. That is knowledge. Confucius
• Real knowledge is to know the extent of one’s ignorance. Confucius
• To know one’s ignorance is the best part of knowledge. Laozi

.

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
• Education is a progressive discovery of our own ignorance. Will Durant
• Knowledge is the small part of ignorance that we arrange and classify. Ambrose Bierce
• It takes considerable knowledge just to realize the extent of your own ignorance. Thomas Sowell
• The more we know, the better we realize that our knowledge is a little island in the midst of an ocean of ignorance. Theodosius Dobzhansky
• 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
• We know nothing at all. All our knowledge is but the knowledge of schoolchildren. The real nature of things we shall never know. Albert Einstein
• The greater our knowledge increases the more our ignorance unfolds. John F. Kennedy
• Our knowledge can only be finite, while our ignorance must necessarily be infinite. Karl Popper

.

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
• 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.” Robert Green Ingersoll

.

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
• Ignorance of ignorance, then, is that self-satisfied state of unawareness in which man, knowing nothing outside the limited area of his physical senses, bumptiously declares there is nothing more to know! Manly Hall

.

Not ignorance but the illusion of knowledge is the greatest obstacle to discovery

• The greatest obstacle to discovery is not ignorance – it is the illusion of knowledge. Daniel J. Boorstin
• The great obstacle of progress is not ignorance, but the illusion of knowledge. Rod Beckwith
• 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
• Half-knowledge is worse than ignorance. Thomas B. Macaulay
• Through human history, illusions of knowledge, not ignorance, have proven to be the principal obstacles to discovery. Daniel J. Boorstin
• It is the illusion of knowledge, not ignorance, that keeps one from growing. Jerry Uelsmann

.

The world has suffered 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

.

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