Knowing Your Ignorance Quotes & Sayings

Pride comes from not knowing yourself and the world. The older you grow, and the more you see, the less reason you will find for being proud. Ignorance and inexperience are the pedestal of pride; once the pedestal is removed - pride will soon come down. — J.C. Ryle

Not everyone is willing to defend a position of 'not knowing.' There is no virtue in ignorance for its own sake. — B.F. Skinner

Wisdom isn't a body of information. It's the moral quality of knowing what you don't know and figuring out a way to handle your ignorance, uncertainty, and limitation. — David Brooks

Behind the naive vanities, the daydreams, they had very badly wanted to be writers. Had wanted it without knowing at all what it was they wanted, their fervor making up for their ignorance. His older self was cooler, more noncommittal, for he had learned that to publicize your goals means running the risk of falling short of them. — David Sedaris

[W]e must come into a transformed knowing, an unknowing which comes not from ignorance but from knowledge. — Meister Eckhart

Curiosity takes ignorance seriously, and is confident enough to admit when it does not know. It is aware of not knowing, and it sets out to do something about it — Alain De Botton

Henry's universe was modeled on the highball. It was a mixture in which half a pint of the fizziest philosophical and scientific ideas all but drowned a small jigger of immediate experience, most of it strictly sexual. Broken reeds are seldom good mixers. They're far too busy with their ideas, their sensuality and their psychosomatic complaints to be able to take an interest in other people - even their own wives and children. They live in a state of the most profound voluntary ignorance, not knowing anything about anybody, but abounding in preconceived opinions about everything. — Aldous Huxley

The good repent on knowing their sin; the evil become angry when discovered. Ignorance is not the cause of evil, as Plato held; neither is education the answer to the removal of evil. These men had an intellect as well as a will; knowledge as well as intention. Truth can be known and hated; Goodness can be known and crucified. The Hour was approaching, and for the moment the fear of the people deterred the Pharisees. Violence could not be triggered against Him until He would say, 'This is your Hour. — Fulton J. Sheen

Many people come and go,
knowing not why they ever did so.
A miserable thing can it be -
unconscious of why thy Creator made thee. — James Bergson

Knowing more than someone does not necessarily mean that you know every single thing they know. — Mokokoma Mokhonoana

We know nothing worth knowing about what goes on outside our frontiers. Worse-we know very little more about what goes on within them. Beyond the light of one's own personal experience-darkness. What are people thinking? What are they feeling? How do they behave? Messages of reassurance or exhortation come through. One reads between the lines. Friends pool their knowledge. But in general we live like animals, in ignorance of the world around us. — Michael Frayn

Silence will illuminate you in God ... and deliver you from phantoms of ignorance. Silence will unite you to God ... In the beginning we have to force ourselves to be silent. But then from our very silence is born something that draws us into deeper silence. May God give you an experience of this 'something' that is born of silence — Isaac Of Nenevah

There are some people who start off knowing very little about the world and end up years later knowing even less. Never underestimate the capacity of the human mind for ignorance. Mr. Woodhouse found this very amusing. — Alexander McCall Smith

You can use reading as a food for the ego. It is very subtle. You can become knowledgeable; then it is dangerous and harmful. Then you are poisoning yourself, because knowledge is not knowing, knowledge is not wisdom. Wisdom has nothing to do with knowledge. Wisdom can exist in total ignorance also. If you use reading just as a food for the mind, to increase your memory, then you are in a wrong direction. But reading can be used in a different way; then reading is as beautiful as anything else in life — Osho

Cheapness and ignorance are mutually reinforcing. And it's a short way from not knowing who's at the other end of your food chain to not caring - to the carelessness of both producers and consumers. — Michael Pollan

A man is skillful at woodraft just in proportion as he approaches this balance. Knowing the wilderness can be comfortable when a less experienced man would endure hardship. Conversely, if a man endures hardships where a woodsman could be comfortable, it argues not his toughness, but his ignorance or foolishness, which is exactly the case with our blatant friend of the drawing-room reputation. — Stewart Edward White

There have been many poets who have lived at the fifth center of creativity and never gone ahead - many painters, many dancers, many singers who created great art, but never moved to the third eye. And there have been mystics who have remained with the third eye, knowing their own inner beauty; it is so fulfilling that they thought they had arrived. Somebody is needed to tell you that there is still something more ahead; otherwise, in your ignorance, what you will do is almost unpredictable. — Rajneesh

Simple people, people who don't exist, prefer things which don't exist,simple things.
"Good" and "bad" are simple things. You bomb me = "bad." I bomb you = "good." Simple people (who,incidentally,run this socalled world)know this(they know everything)whereas complex people - people who feel something - are very,very ignorant and really don't know anything.
Nothing, for simple knowing people, is more dangerous than ignorance. Why?
Because to feel something is to be alive. — E. E. Cummings

Any fool can see the limits of seeing, but not even the wisest know the limits of knowing. Thus is ignorance rendered invisible, and are all Men made fools. — R. Scott Bakker

There is nothing better than not knowing. — Markus W. Lunner

Isn't it better to live in ignorance of everything
asphalt and macadam, vehicles, telephones, televisions
to live in bliss without knowing it? — Greg Mortenson

Ignorance" is NOT not knowing the facts, it's not willing to know when the fact are shown to you. — Maria Anna Van Driel

There is a secret earth gyrm, a place where the unbelievable, the unthinkable, the terrible, takes place every day. A place hidden by the veils of ignorance and cowardice and fear. On occasions we glimpse it, when its hidden terrors fall through that veil into plain sight, but mostly we just dismiss it as something else, somewhere else, to be dealt with by someone else. Long ago I found the veil and lifted it. And knowing as I do what is behind, what those behind it get away with, with impunity ... I cannot grow old basking on the bank of some safe-haven, no. — Shaun Hick

Suppose I try saying something. What way do I have of knowing that if I say I know something I don't really not know it? Or what way do I have of knowing that if I say I don't know something I don't really in fact know it? — Zhuangzi

Tibby, on the other hand, had spent hundreds and hundreds of hours with Brian striving for the comfort of not knowing. — Ann Brashares

These are the only two situations possible, and you are in the sad situation. Everybody may know about you - who you are - but you yourself are completely oblivious of your transcendence, of your real nature, of your authentic being. This is the only sadness in life. You can find many excuses, but the real sadness is this: you don't know who you are. How can a person be happy not knowing who he is, not knowing from where he comes, not knowing where he is going? A thousand and one problems arise because of this basic self-ignorance. — Rajneesh

Ignorance is a horrible thing. But arrogance, the belief that knowing a little more than the ignorant makes you wise, is more horrible still. — James Rozoff

People who were only ever half right about things drove me mad. I hated the flood of opinion, the certainty, the easy talk about Cuba and Russia and the economy, because beneath the hard structure of words was an abyss of ignorance and not-knowing; and, in a sense, of not wanting to know. — Hanif Kureishi

Uncertainty that comes from knowledge (knowing what you don't know) is different from uncertainty coming from ignorance. — Isaac Asimov

Ignorance is not, not knowing something. It is knowing what isn't so. — Mark Twain

We are three quarters of a mile in the depths of the earth, and the great river shrinks into insignificance, as it dashes its angry waves against the walls and cliffs, that rise to the world above; they are but puny ripples, and we but pigmies, running up and down the sands, or lost among the boulders. We have an unknown distance yet to run; an unknown river yet to explore. What falls there are, we know not; what rocks beset the channel, we know not; what walls rise over the river, we know not. Powell wasn't overstating their ignorance. At this point, they had no clear idea how far they had come or how much canyon lay ahead of them. They did not know how many turns the river would make, how many rapids there might be, or whether their supplies would sustain them through the time it would take to negotiate these obstacles. And they had no way of knowing that their most serious challenges lay ahead. Just — Kevin Fedarko

Someone asked the other day, "Why do we go to school?" Pat, with vigor
unusual in her, said, "So when we grow up we won't be stupid." These
children equate stupidity with ignorance. Is this what they mean when they
call themselves stupid? Is this one of the reasons why they are so ashamed of
not knowing something? If so, have we, perhaps un-knowingly, taught them
to feel this way? We should clear up this distinction, show them that it is
possible to know very few facts, but make very good use of them.
Conversely, one can know many facts and still act stupidly. The learned fool
is by no means rare in this country. — John Holt

Questioning this most dearly held core of the Dutch sense of self not only is felt as a direct attack, it also means that the nonbeliever, the antiracist killjoy, is putting himself or herself above "us," which in itself again runs deeply counter to another strand in the Dutch sense of self: "gelijke monnikken, gelijke kappen" (literally, equal monks, equal cowls), which invokes the deep egalitarian strand in Dutch self-representation. Critical self-reflection, moreover and ironically, is a scarce commodity in a culture that delights in imagining itself as "nothing," "just normal" (Ramdas 1998), without specific characteristics, much less infused with deep racializations. The point of not knowing, racial ignorance, and innocence has long passed. — Gloria Wekker

Ignorance is God's prison. Knowing is God's palace — Rumi

The Tao belongs neither to knowing nor not knowing. Knowing is false understanding; not knowing is blind ignorance. If you really understand the Tao beyond doubt, it's like the empty sky. Why drag in right and wrong? — Alan Watts

There are genuine mysteries in the world that mark the limits of human knowing and thinking. Wisdom is fortified, not destroyed, by understanding its limitations. Ignorance does not make a fool as surely as self-deception. — Mortimer J. Adler

It is conceivable that not knowing the meaning of life is part of the meaning of life, rather as not counting how many words I am uttering when I give an after-dinner speech helps me to give an after-dinner speech. Perhaps life is kept going by our ignorance of its fundamental meaning, as capitalism for Karl Marx — Terry Eagleton

To attempt to know myself 'apart' from God is to choose to know nothing more than 'a part' of myself. — Craig D. Lounsbrough

To know a thing you have to trust what you know, and all that you know, and as far as you know in whatever direction your knowing drags you. I once had a pet pine squirrel named Omar who lived in the cotton secret and springy dark of our old green davenport; Omar knew that davenport; he knew from the Inside what I only sat on from the Out, and trusted his knowledge to keep from being squashed by my ignorance. He survived until a red plaid blanket
spread to camouflage the worn-out Outside
confused him so he lost his faith in his familiarity with the In. Instead of trying to incorporate a plaid exterior into the scheme of his world he moved to the rainspout at the back of the house and was drowned in the first fall shower, probably still blaming that blanket: damn this world that just won't hold still for us! Damn it anyway! — Ken Kesey

It is crucial that Jesus is led by the Spirit. There are two wildernesses, two darknesses in the spiritual journey. One you go into by your own stupidity, by your sin, blindness, ignorance and mistakes. We all do that. But there's another darkness. The holy darkness is the darkness that God leads us into, through and beyond. This is a necessary darkness for the journey. In a certain sense, God's darkness is a much better teacher than light. There comes a time when you have to either go deeper into faith or you will turn back, when you have to live without knowing or you lose faith altogether. So we have the Spirit leading Jesus into the wilderness, to face the essential darkness. — Richard Rohr

Yes, and words are not deeds, Solanka allowed, moving off fretfully. Though words can become deeds. If said in the right place and at the right time, they can move mountains and change the world. Also, uh-huh, not knowing what you're doing - separating deeds from the words that define them - was apparently becoming an acceptable excuse. To say "I didn't mean it" was to erase meaning from your misdeeds, at least in the opinion of the Beloved ALis of the world. Could that be so? Obviously, no. No, it simply could not. Many people would say that even a genuine act of repentance could not atone for a crime, much less this unexplained blankness - an infinitely lesser excuse, a mere assertion of ignorance that wouldn't even register on any scale of regret. — Salman Rushdie

Knowing your purpose helps you in using all available resources in achieving your goals — Sunday Adelaja

Knowing your own ignorance is the first step to enlightenment. — Patrick Rothfuss

Knowing your ignorance is better than your knowledge. — Debasish Mridha

Knowing your ignorance is far better than knowing what you know! Understanding the path and will of God is far better than mastering your own path. — Ernest Agyemang Yeboah

You can stay in the safe, secure oblivion and pain of ignorance, not knowing, and just die. You'll just die, like everyone else, and shuffle into another incarnation that won't be very different. — Frederick Lenz

As the moon, though darkened with spots, gives us a much greater light than the stars that sewn all-luminous, so do the Scriptures afford more light than the brightest human authors. In them the ignorant may learn all requisite knowledge, and the most knowing may learn to discern their ignorance. — Robert Boyle

Ignorance is not bliss. Bliss is knowing the full meaning of what you have been given. — David Levithan

There is no shame in ignorance, only in denying it. By knowing what we do not know, we can take steps to remedy our lack of knowledge — Graham McNeill

Entropy
The Disintegrating Integration of
Cheez-Whiz Squirts Insipid Inspiration
Quoth the Oblong Eclipse of
Nether-Knowledge Never Knowing
Decaying Matter in a Decaying Orbit
Orangutans of Science
Study Ignorance of What
The Cows Already Know. — Ubiquitous Bubba

Ignorance of ignorance, then, is that self-satisfied state of unawareness in which man, knowing nothing outside the limited area of his physical senses, bumptiously declares there is nothing more to know! — Manly Hall

Without reading many different books, you can never leave the port of ignorance and can never obtain the peaceful mind of knowing the truth! — Mehmet Murat Ildan

There is simple ignorance, not knowing, and willful ignorance that refuses to know, that covers the light of knowledge with the dark blanket of bias. — Elizabeth Moon

It is not so bad being ignorant if you are totally ignorant; the hard thing is knowing in some detail the reality of ignorance ... — Lewis Thomas

What you have in hand may be of less essence to knowing and using what you have in hand — Ernest Agyemang Yeboah

You are really in search of yourself, without knowing it. You are love-longing for the love-worthy, the perfect lovable. Due to ignorance you are looking for it in the world of opposites and contradictions. When you find it within, your search will be over. — Sri Nisargadatta Maharaj

Ignorance is the most expensive thing in the world. Knowing — Matthew Michalewicz

Belief is in ignorance. If you know, you know. And it is good that if you don't know, know that you don't know - the belief can deceive you. The belief can create an atmosphere in your mind, where, without knowing, you start thinking that you know. Belief is not trust, and the more strongly you say that you believe totally, the more you are afraid of the doubt within you. — Osho

You cannot know what I do not tell you, yet you will be judged harshly for not knowing. — Richelle E. Goodrich

Why, a dog, whenever he sees a stranger, is angry; when an acquaintance, he welcomes him, although the one has never done him any harm, nor the other any good. Did this never strike you as curious? The matter never struck me before; but I quite recognise the truth of your remark. And surely this instinct of the dog is very charming; - your dog is a true philosopher. Why? Why, because he distinguishes the face of a friend and of an enemy only by the criterion of knowing and not knowing. And must not an animal be a lover of learning who determines what he likes and dislikes by the test of knowledge and ignorance? Most — Plato

True openness is the accompaniment of the desire to know, hence of the awareness of ignorance. To deny the possibility of knowing good and bad is to suppress true openness. — Allan Bloom

I think that the root of Willful Ignorance, is Fear. We'll return to that in a minute. But the root of Fear, is Simple Ignorance, at least I think that our original Fear is rooted in simply not understanding the World around us: not knowing. — Steve Bivans

Fight death all your days, and die knowing you know nothing. — Ardel Wray

Never feel dumb. Not knowing who or what is no sin. Ignorance is simply the measure of what you haven't got to yet. I find writers and works every day that I haven't got to, haven't even heard of. — Thomas C. Foster

Life without knowing your destiny leads to "rat races", depression and frustration, and attempt to commit suicide — Sunday Adelaja

When Socrates said he knew nothing he still thought he knew more than anyone else. — Marty Rubin

Dogmatism and skepticism are both, in a sense, absolute philosophies; one is certain of knowing, the other of not knowing. What philosophy should dissipate is certainty, whether of knowledge or ignorance. — Bertrand Russell

There are those who know and those who don't know. And for every ten thousand who don't know there's only one who knows. That's the miracle of all time
the fact that these millions know so much but don't know this. — Carson McCullers

He liked her not knowing. I could tell. He liked her not knowing. Her ignorance woke a pleasure that melted on his tongue, like a lick of toffee. — Alice Munro

You have great power inborn in you, and you used that power wrongly, to work a spell over which you had no control, not knowing how that spell affects the balance of light and dark, life and death, good and evil. And you were moved to do this by pride and by hate. Is it any wonder the result was ruin? You summoned a spirit from the dead, but with it came one of the Powers of unlife. Uncalled it came from a place where there are no names. Evil, it wills to work evil through you. The power you had to call it gives it power over you: you are connected. It is the shadow of your arrogance, the shadow of your ignorance, the shadow you cast. Has a shadow a name? — Ursula K. Le Guin

There was comfort in ignorance, in thinking the world a certain way and not knowing any different. — Christina Henry

Ignorance is mere privation by which nothing can be produced: it is a vacuity in which the soul sits motionless and torpid for want of attraction: and, without knowing why, we always rejoice when we learn, and grieve when we forget. — Samuel Johnson