We receive the truths of science by compulsion. Nothing but ignorance is able to resist them.

The questions of philosophy proper are human desires and fears and aspirations - human emotions - taking an intellectual form.

We receive the truths of science by compulsion. Nothing but ignorance is able to resist them.

Natural Selection never made it come to pass, as a habit of nature, that an unsupported stone should move downwards rather than upwards. It applies to no part of inorganic nature, and is very limited even in the phenomena of organic life.

And we owe science to the combined energies of individual men of genius, rather than to any tendency to progress inherent in civilization.

The pains of disconcerted or frustrated habits, and the inherent pleasure there is in following them, are motives which nature has put into our wills without generally caring to inform us why; and she sometimes decrees, indeed, that her reasons shall not be ours.

Such evidence is not the only kind which produces belief; though positivism maintains that it is the only kind which ought to produce so high a degree of confidence as all minds have or can be made to have through their agreements.

Let one persuade many, and he becomes confirmed and convinced, and cares for no better evidence.

The accidental causes of science are only accidents relatively to the intelligence of a man.

If they are, then the only ultimate truths are the particulars of concrete experience, and no postulate or general assumption is inherent in science until its proceedings become systematic, or the truths already reached give direction to further research.

By what criterion... can we distinguish among the numberless effects, that are also causes, and among the causes that may, for aught we can know, be also effects, - how can we distinguish which are the means and which are the ends?

All observers not laboring under hallucinations of the senses are agreed, or can be made to agree, about facts of sensible experience, through evidence toward which the intellect is merely passive, and over which the individual will and character have no control.

Without feeling abashed by my ignorance, I confess that I am absolutely unable to say. In the absence of an appearance of learning, my answer has at least one merit, that of perfect sincerity.

Until as recently as November of 1966, I had complete faith in the Warren Report. Of course, my faith in the Report was grounded in ignorance, since I had never read it.

Prayer is an august avowal of ignorance.

Fear is the lengthened shadow of ignorance.

There are in fact two things, science and opinion; the former begets knowledge, the later ignorance.

All the perplexities, confusion and distress in America arise, not from defects in their Constitution or Confederation, not from want of honor or virtue, so much as from the downright ignorance of the nature of coin, credit and circulation.

I have to plead basic ignorance of most new jazz artists here.

It ain't ignorance that causes all the trouble in this world. It's the things people know that ain't so.

Backward is just not a natural direction for Americans to look - historical ignorance remains a national characteristic.

Behind every argument is someone's ignorance.

If not bliss, ignorance can at least be fun.

The prejudices of ignorance are more easily removed than the prejudices of interest; the first are all blindly adopted, the second willfully preferred.

The fifth freedom is freedom from ignorance.

Our souls may lose their peace and even disturb other people's, if we are always criticizing trivial actions - which often are not real defects at all, but we construe them wrongly through our ignorance of their motives.

Scientific men can hardly escape the charge of ignorance with regard to the precise effect of the impact of modern science upon the mode of living of the people and upon their civilisation.

The consciousness of the falsity of present pleasures, and the ignorance of the vanity of absent pleasures, cause inconstancy.

Quotations are useful in periods of ignorance or obscurantist beliefs.

In expanding the field of knowledge we but increase the horizon of ignorance.

His ignorance is encyclopedic.

The principles of justice are chosen behind a veil of ignorance.

The voice of the intelligence is drowned out by the roar of fear. It is ignored by the voice of desire. It is contradicted by the voice of shame. It is biased by hate and extinguished by anger. Most of all it is silenced by ignorance.

Privacy under what circumstance? Privacy at home under what circumstances? You have more privacy if everyone's illiterate, but you wouldn't really call that privacy. That's ignorance.

Ignorance is the mother of devotion.

When ignorance gets started it knows no bounds.

Truth will always be truth, regardless of lack of understanding, disbelief or ignorance.

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.

The average man has a carefully cultivated ignorance about household matters - from what to do with the crumbs to the grocer's telephone number - a sort of cheerful inefficiency which protects him.

It's innocence when it charms us, ignorance when it doesn't.

A little learning is a dangerous thing, but a lot of ignorance is just as bad.

We are born knowing nothing and with much striving we learn but a little; yet all the while we are bound by laws that hearken to no plea of ignorance, and measure out their rewards and punishments with calm indifference.

Opinion is the medium between knowledge and ignorance.

If ignorance paid dividends, most Americans could make a fortune out of what they don't know about economics.

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.

Ignorance is never better than knowledge.

Ignorance is the curse of God; knowledge is the wing wherewith we fly to heaven.

People talk about revelation, and say it has ceased; but what ignorance it bespeaks, when man knows not the least thing on earth without revelation.

It is not enough to be well-intentioned; one must strive to put those intentions into action in a capable way. One must consider the effect his actions will have on others. Looked at like this, to persist in ignorance is itself dishonorable.