#ignorance

The man who believes that the secrets of the world are forever hidden lives in mystery and fear. Superstition will drag him down. The rain will erode the deeds of his life. But that man who sets himself the task of singling out the thread of order from the tapestry will by the decision alone have taken charge of the world and it is only by such taking charge that he will effect a way to dictate the terms of his own fate. ↗

— Cormac McCarthy

#fate #fear #ignorance #life #order

Only a blind man can easily define what light is. When you do not know, you are bold. Ignorance is always bold; knowledge hesitates. And the more you know, the more you feel that the ground underneath is dissolving. The more you know, the more you feel how ignorant you are. ↗

— Osho

#knowledge #love

There are young men and women up and down the land who happily (or unhappily) tell anyone who will listen that they don’t have an academic turn of mind, or that they aren’t lucky enough to have been blessed with a good memory, and yet can recite hundreds of pop lyrics and reel off any amount of information about footballers. Why? Because they are interested in those things. They are curious. If you are hungry for food, you are prepared to hunt high and low for it. If you are hungry for information it is the same. Information is all around us, now more than ever before in human history. You barely have to stir or incommode yourself to find things out. The only reason people do not know much is because they do not care to know. They are incurious. Incuriosity is the oddest and most foolish failing there is. ↗

— Stephen Fry

#willful-ignorance #food

The truth is like salt. Men want to taste a little, but too much makes everyone sick. ↗

— Joe Abercrombie

#knowledge #truth #men

I remeber asking a wise man, once . . . 'Why do Men fear the dark?' . . . 'Because darkness' he told me, 'is ignorance made visable.' 'And do Men despise ignorance?' I asked. 'No,' he said, 'they prize it above all things--all things!--but only so long as it remains invisible. ↗

— R. Scott Bakker

#fear #ignorance #pg- #men

The men on the trading floor may not have been to school, but they have Ph.D.’s in man’s ignorance. ↗

— Michael Lewis

#trading #men

in times like the present, men should utter nothing for which they would not willingly be responsible through time and eternity. ↗

— Abraham Lincoln

#knowledge #remaining-silent #wisdom #men

I can calculate the motion of heavenly bodies but not the madness of people. ↗

— Isaac Newton

#ignorance #knowledge #wisdom #nature

It has become almost a cliché to remark that nobody boasts of ignorance of literature, but it is socially acceptable to boast ignorance of science and proudly claim incompetence in mathematics. ↗

— Richard Dawkins

#math #science #science

The greatest of all the accomplishments of 20th century science has been the discovery of human ignorance ↗

— Lewis Thomas

#science