Quotes & Sayings About Willful Ignorance

Don't tell me what I'm doing; I don't want to know. — Federico Fellini

To surrender to ignorance and call it God has always been premature, and it remains premature today. — Isaac Asimov

Willful ignorance is something to be ashamed of, not proud. — Christina Engela

There is a dangerous willful ignorance in governments to the adverse health effects of the various forms of electromagnetic radiation. — Steven Magee

Bill O'Reilly calls his tv show the "No Spin Zone" but the man is practically a whirling dervish. He combines willful ignorance with a simple child-like faith in the system that, not coincidentally, has made him a millionaire. — Earl Lee

An age is called Dark, not because the light fails to shine, but because people refuse to see it. — James A. Michener

More generally, as I shall repeat in Chapter 8, one of the truly bad effects of religion is that it teaches us that it is a virtue to be satisfied with not understanding. — Richard Dawkins

When you grow up surrounded by willful ignorance, you have to believe that mercy has it's own country and that it's round and borderless ... — Ani DiFranco

The hardest thing to explain is the glaringly evident which everybody has decided not to see. — Ayn Rand

(both circumvented the handicap of deafness by answering only those questions they believed had been asked & accepting only those answers they believed had been uttered - a stratagem embraced by many an American advocate) — David Mitchell

One and all they are driven by the twin engines of ignorance and willful barbarism. You nod, you also are familiar with these two powerful components of our national character, ignorance and willful barbarianism. Yes, everywhere you turn, and even among the most gifted of us, the most extensively educated, these two brute forces of motivation will eventually emerge. The essential information is always missing; sensitivity is a mere veil to self-concern. We are all secret encouragers of ignorance, at heart we are all willful barbarians. — John Hawkes

I have argued elsewhere that DWYL is an essentially narcissistic schema, facilitating willful ignorance of working conditions of others by encouraging continuous self-gratification. I have also argued that DWYL exposes its adherents to exploitation, justifying unpaid or underpaid work by throwing workers' motivations back at them; when passion becomes the socially accepted motivation for working, talk of wages or reasonable scheduling becomes crass. This book examines the many expectations about what work can provide under the DWYL creed, and the sacrifices that workers make in order to meet those expectations. — Miya Tokumitsu

Only a blind man could have lived through these last years without seeing what was bearing down upon us; so I made myself blind as I could manage. I wanted to believe the worst was behind me, and I found an easy way to make it so. I simply turned my back on what was coming. — John Wray

But you can't make people listen. They have to come round in their own time, wondering what happened and why the world blew up around them. It can't last. — Ray Bradbury

Why does everyone have to pretend to be stupid and not know long words? — Martin Freeman

[T]he scripture worshippers put the writings ahead of God. Instead of interpreting God's actions in nature, for example, they interpret nature in the light of the Scripture. Nature says the rock is billions of years old, but the book says different, so even though men wrote the book, and God made the rock and God gave us minds that have found ways to tell how old it is, we still choose to believe the Scripture. — Sheri S. Tepper

A very, in a sense, terrifying aspect of our society, and other societies, is the equanimity and the detachment with which sane, reasonable, sensible people can observe [war]. I think that's more terrifying than the occasional Hitler or LeMay or other that crops up. These people would not be able to operate were it not for this apathy and equanimity ... and therefore I think that it's, in some sense, the sane and reasonable and tolerant people who share a very serious burden of guilt that they very easily throw on the shoulders of others who seem more extreme and violent. — Noam Chomsky

It's much easier not to know things sometimes. — Stephen Chbosky

I try to avoid having thoughts. They lead to other thoughts, and - if you're not careful - those lead to actions. Actions make you tired. I have this on rather good authority from someone who once read it in a book. — Brandon Sanderson

He didn't believe that, surely." "Of course not! But he had to pretend he did, as otherwise he would have had no choice but to be insulted. And since there would be nothing he could do about that, being insulted would only lead to humiliation. And since he didn't want that, the simplest path to follow was to believe what I said. — Isaac Asimov

The moral complexity of the situation had grown past his ability to process it, so he just relaxed in the warm glow of victory instead. — James S.A. Corey

A man is responsible for his ignorance. — Milan Kundera

People are stupid. They will believe a lie because they want to believe it's true, or because they are afraid it might be true. — Terry Goodkind

Where resides the comforting knowledge of history's vast, cyclical sweep, the ebb and flow of wars and peace? Peace is the time of waiting for war. A time of preparation, or a time of willful ignorance, blind, blinkered and prattling behind secure walls. — Steven Erikson

This is why she hates Alabaster: not because he is more powerful, not even because he is crazy, but because he refuses to allow her any of the polite fictions and unspoken truths that have kept her comfortable, and safe, for years. — N.K. Jemisin

Humans see what they want to see. — Rick Riordan

Knowledge tossed away," she said, shivering a little in the desert chill. "Willful ignorance in the face of something we might have to work to understand." At — Richard K. Morgan

Give me a man or woman who has read a thousand books and you give me an interesting companion. Give me a man or woman who has read perhaps three and you give me a very dangerous enemy indeed. — Anne Rice

The major threats to our survival no longer stem from nature without but from our own human nature within. It is our carelessness, our hostilities, our selfishness and pride and willful ignorance that endanger the world. — M. Scott Peck

We are all born ignorant, but one must work hard to remain stupid. — Benjamin Franklin

We protected America from what happened, like a man takes care of his wife. The man doesn't mind when she closes her eyes at the scary part of the ride, of the movie. He loves her for that sweet, willful ignorance. She gives him something to protect, a nice world in which bad things don't happen. It's a pleasure, and a relief, to keep that ignorance intact, even as it comes between them. — Amy Bloom

When all this is over, people will try to blame the Germans alone, and the Germans will try to blame the Nazis alone, and the Nazis will try to blame Hitler alone. They will make him bear the sins of the world. But it's not true. You suspected what was happening, and so did I. It was already too late over a year ago. I caused a reporter to lose his job because you told me to. He was deported. The day I did that I made my little contribution to civilization, the only one that matters. — Iain Pears

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. — Charles Darwin

The truth is a powerful thing: it does not allow a person to remain undisturbed. Some embrace and follow the truth. Some reject it outright. Others prefer to ignore it. employing what might be termed 'intentional ignorance'. How a person reacts to the truth is a willful decision that produces unavoidable consequences in that person't life.
If Materialism is embraced, then we invent our own standards of tight and wrong and are accountable to no one for our decisions. If, however, the Bible is right, then there is an absolute standard of right and wrong and we are to be held accountable for not only our decision, but our attitudes and actions as well. In Paul's letter to the Romans he states:
For the invisible things of him from the creation of the world are clearly seen, being understood by the things that are made, even his eternal power and Godhead; so that they are without excuse:
(Romans 1:20) — Werner Gitt

The more you can escape from how horrible things really are, the less it's going to bother you ... and then, the worse things get. — Frank Zappa

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

Willful ignorance or resistance to alleged facts has been a big ingredient in any success I've had. — Rob Delaney

This is the biggest lot of abolitionist trash I ever saw."
"No it isn't," I said. "That book wasn't even written until a century after slavery was abolished."
"Then why the hell are they still complaining about it? — Octavia E. Butler

Any formal attack on ignorance is bound to fail because the masses are always ready to defend their most precious possession - their ignorance. — Hendrik Willem Van Loon

It was clear to me that it wouldn't matter what I did - they would never truly appreciate me or learn what I had to offer. They were far beyond fickle - they were insensible, like kittens,predatory little things, distracted by the first bit of string or shiny bauble that rolled across the floor, and nothing I could ever say or do could possibly make any kind of dent in their willful ignorance. — Jeff Lindsay

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

If it's a choice between a difficult truth and a simple lie, people will take the lie every time. Even if it kills them. — Paul Murray

Informed optimism is different from a willful ignorance that simply wishes not to see the bad in the world. Seeing the truth and choosing every day to see it, letting life break your heart but doing something about it took courage. It was not about hiding your head in the sand but rather digging in, accepting the challenges, and doing the hard work it takes not just to complain about a problem but to be the solution. — Jewel

It is only in folk tales, children's stories, and the journals of intellectual opinion that power is used wisely and well to destroy evil. The real world teaches very different lessons, and it takes willful and dedicated ignorance to fail to perceive them. — Noam Chomsky

The two pillars of 'political correctness' are, a) willful ignorance, and b) a steadfast refusal to face the truth. — George MacDonald Fraser

There is a wish in the heart of mankind to be distracted and confused. Truth is but one attraction, and not always the most powerful. — Joyce Carol Oates

The frantic stupidity of Wall Street's stock order routers and algorithms was simply an extension into the computer of the willful ignorance of its salespeople. — Michael Lewis

Thinking is man's only basic virtue, from which all the others proceed. And his basic vice, the source of all his evils, is that nameless act which all of you practice, but struggle never to admit: the act of blanking out, the willful suspension of one's consciousness, the refusal to think - not blindness, but the refusal to see; not ignorance, but the refusal to know. It is the act of unfocusing your mind and inducing an inner fog to escape the responsibility of
default on existence and you pass the deficit to some moral man, expecting him to sacrifice his good for the sake of letting you survive by your evil.

Notes From: Rand, Ayn. "Atlas Shrugged." iBooks. — Rand Ayn

The irony of American history is the tendency of good white Americanas to presume racial innocence. Ignorance of how we are shaped racially is the first sign of privilege.
In other words. It is a privilege to ignore the consequences of race in America. — Tim Wise

Ah, to be a conservative climate change denier. While real scientists must do all the research and engage in heated debates about just how bad things are going to be, the deniers can rest easy in the bliss of willful ignorance. — David Horsey

We can easily forgive a child who is afraid of the dark; the real tragedy of life is when men are afraid of the light. — Plato

Gradually, however, she revealed a frustration with the willful ignorance that is an abiding human trait, an indignation at the cruelty that people visit upon one another. She might see the world as hopeless, but she believed it did not have to remain that way. — Dean Koontz

Sometimes a man wants to be stupid if it lets him do a thing his cleverness forbids. — John Steinbeck

But the old traditions of sectarian misdirection still in spite of a certain advance in technical efficiency, cripple and distort the general mind. "All that has been changed," cry indignant teachers under criticism. But the evidence that this teaching of theirs still fails to produce a public that is alert, critical, and capable of vigorous readjustment in the face of overwhelming danger, is to be seen in the newspapers that satisfy the Tewler public, the arguments and slogans that appeal to it, the advertisements that succeed with it, the stuff it swallows. It is a press written by Homo Tewler for Homo Tewler all up and down the scale. The Times Tewler, the Daily Mail Tewler, the Herald, the Tribune, the Daily Worker; there is no difference except a difference in scale and social atmosphere. Through them all ran the characteristic Tewler streak of willful ignorance, deliberate disingenuousness, and self-protective illusion. — H.G.Wells

Being ignorant is not so much a shame, as being unwilling to learn. — Benjamin Franklin

The vast majority of human beings dislike and even actually dread all notions with which they are not familiar ... Hence it comes about that at their first appearance innovators have generally been persecuted, and always derided as fools and madmen. — Aldous Huxley

Willful ignorance and endless laws become the replacement for self-education and self-restraint, because ignorance and laws are easy. — Holly Lisle

Situational unawareness in the private marketplace or on the battlefield will cost you your livelihood or your life. In the Age of Obama, however, such willful ignorance is a job prerequisite. The less you know the better. — Michelle Malkin

Sometimes we find ourselves walking through life blindfolded, and we try to deny that we're the ones who securely tied the knot. — Jodi Picoult

The past was still a Golden Age, of ignorance, while the present is an Iron Age of willful bliss. — Jared Diamond

The sin which is unpardonable is knowingly and wilfully to reject truth, to fear knowledge lest that knowledge pander not to thy prejudices. — Aleister Crowley

Five percent of the people think;
ten percent of the people think they think;
and the other eighty-five percent would rather die than think. — Thomas A. Edison

Faith is the great cop-out, the great excuse to evade the need to think and evaluate evidence. Faith is the belief in spite of, even perhaps because of, the lack of evidence. — Richard Dawkins

Because I do not wish to know," he says. "I prefer to remain unenlightened, to better appreciate the dark. — Erin Morgenstern