Ignorance is bold, and knowledge is reserved

Ignorance, to a scientist, is an itch that begs to be pleasurably scratched. Ignorance, if you are a theologian, is something to be washed away by shamelessly making something up.

It's not what we don't know that hurts. It's what we know that ain't so.

The more we learn about the world, and the deeper our learning, the more conscious, specific, and articulate will be our knowledge of what we do not know; our knowledge of our ignorance. For this indeed, is the main source of our ignorance - the fact that our knowledge can be only finite, while our ignorance must necessarily be infinite.

The trouble with the world is not that people know too little; it's that they know so many things that just aren't so.

True ignorance is not the absence of knowledge, but the refusal to acquire it.

If there is something that opens horizons, it is precisely ignorance.

...ignorance more frequently begets confidence than does knowledge...

The modern ignorance is in people's assumption that they can outsmart their own nature. It is in the arrogance that will believe nothing that cannot be proved, and respect nothing it cannot understand, and value nothing it cannot sell . . . The <i>next</i> hard time is just as real to him as the last, and so is the next blessing. The new ignorance is the same as the old, only less aware that ignorance is the same as the old, only less aware that ignorance is what it is. It is less humble, more foolish and frivolous, more dangerous. A man, Old Jack thinks, has no choice but to be ignorant, but he does not have to be a fool. He can know his place, and he can stay in it and be faithful.

Ignorance is of a peculiar nature: once dispelled, it is impossible to re-establish it. It is not originally a thing of itself, but is only the absence of knowledge; and though man may be kept ignorant, he cannot be made ignorant.

We know less when we erroneously think we know than when we recognize that we don’t.

Ignorance
is not bliss. Ignorance is tragedy. Ignorance is
devastation. Ignorance creates lack. Ignorance
creates disease. Ignorance will shorten your life.
Ignorance will empty your life and leave you with
the husks, nothing to account for. No, ignorance is
not bliss.
Here’s another note to make: What you don’t know
will hurt you. What you don’t know will tragically
affect your life. What you don’t know will leave
your life empty. What you don’t know will leave
you without a relationship. We’re all affected by
knowledge, whether we know or whether we don’t
know. That’s why you’ve got to read the books.

What you don’t know has power over you; knowing it brings it under your control, and makes it subject to your choice. Ignorance makes real choice impossible.

Ignorance more frequently begets confidence than does knowledge: it is those who know little, not those who know much, who so positively assert that this or that problem will never be solved by science.