#ignorance

In America, everyone is entitled to an opinion, and it is certainly useful to have a few when a pollster shows up. But these are opinions of a quite different roder from eighteenth- or nineteenth-century opinions. It is probably more accurate to call them emotions rather than opinions, which would account for the fact that they change from week to week, as the pollsters tell us. What is happening here is that television is altering the meaning of 'being informed' by creating a species of information that might properly be called disinformation. I am using this world almost in the precise sense in which it is used by spies in the CIA or KGB. Disinformation does not mean false information. It means misleading information--misplace, irrelevant, fragmented or superficial information--information that creates the illusion of knowing something but which in fact leads one away from knowing. In saying this, I do not mean to imply that television news deliberately aims to deprive Americans of a coherent, contextual understanding of their world. I mean to say that when news is packaged as entertainment, that is the inevitable result. And in saying that the television news show entertains but does not inform, I am saying something far more serious than that we are being deprived of authentic information. I am saying we are losing our sense of what it means to be well informed. Ignorance is always correctable. But what shall we do if we take ignorance to be knowledge? ↗

— Neil Postman

#ignorance #knowledge #media #nate-silver #opinions

Ignorance and a narrow education lay the foundation of vice, and imitation and custom rear it up. ↗

— Mary Astell

#education #foundation #ignorance #imitation #lay

India saw from the beginning, and, even in her ages of reason and her age of increasing ignorance, she never lost hold of the insight, that life cannot be rightly seen in the sole light, cannot be perfectly lived in the sole power of its externalities. ↗

— Sri Aurobindo

#ages #beginning #cannot #even #her

There is no sin but ignorance. ↗

— Christopher Marlowe

#sin

I expect what you're not aware of would fill several books, Dursely. ↗

— J.K. Rowling

#ignorance #funny

To succeed in life, you need two things: ignorance and confidence. ↗

— Mark Twain

#confidence #ignorance #life #need #succeed

I don't think you can ever regain your ignorance. ↗

— Carla Bley

#i #ignorance #regain #think #you

Ignorance of one's misfortunes is clear gain. ↗

— Euripides

#gain #ignorance #misfortunes

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. ↗

— Jean Henri Fabre

#absolutely #am #answer #appearance #confess

Ignorance is never better than knowledge. ↗

— Enrico Fermi

#ignorance #knowledge #never #than