In order to have wisdom we must have ignorance.

Assure a man that he has a soul and then frighten him with old wives' tales as to what is to become of him afterward, and you have hooked a fish, a mental slave.

Our civilization is still in a middle stage, scarcely beast, in that it is no longer wholly guided by instinct; scarcely human, in that it is not yet wholly guided by reason.

I believe in the compelling power of love. I do not understand it. I believe it to be the most fragrant blossom of all this thorny existence.

Art is the stored honey of the human soul, gathered on wings of misery and travail.

Let no one underestimate the need of pity. We live in a stony universe whose hard, brilliant forces rage fiercely.

In order to have wisdom we must have ignorance.

Words are but the vague shadows of the volumes we mean. Little audible links, they are, chaining together great inaudible feelings and purposes.

Nothing is proved, all is permitted.

When the distraction of the tongue is removed, the heart listens.

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.

One of the greatest joys known to man is to take a flight into ignorance in search of knowledge.

Against logic there is no armor like ignorance.