Schopenhauer Ignorance Quotes

Who was that lad they used to try to make me read at Oxford? Ship- Shop- Schopenhauer. That's the name. A grouch of the most pronounced description. ~ P.G. Wodehouse

The significance of our lives and our fragile planet is then determined only by our own wisdom and courage. We are the custodians of life's meaning. We long for a Parent to care for us, to forgive us our errors, to save us from our childish mistakes. But knowledge is preferable to ignorance. Better by far to embrace the hard truth than a reassuring fable. If we crave some cosmic purpose, then let us find ourselves a worthy goal. ~ Carl Sagan

Ignorance breeds antipathy. Until I got to know how computers worked, I didn't want anything to do with them. I said, 'Well, why do I need them? I write letters.' Which I still do. ~ Viggo Mortensen

Stupidity is not lack of intelligence or knowledge. Stupidity is when you are offered a book and you don't read it. Stupidity is when you have the chance to learn from a good teacher and you choose to remain arrogant and defend useless beliefs; Stupidity is when life offers you an opportunity to grow and change and overcome your past, but you can't break free from your habits and rather remain stuck to your old beliefs. Stupidity is when you insult the one that could make you free from your state of stupidity by using stupid affirmations and stupid arguments. Stupidity is always a choice, not a state of being. ~ Robin Sacredfire

We live in a world of paradox: the very opportunities some pilgrims of life wish to get to make great and awesome exploits and feel accomplished and comfortable, others get and they least see what they have and only abuse what they have! ~ Ernest Agyemang Yeboah

Whoever wants his judgment to be believed, should express it coolly and dispassionately; for all vehemence springs from the will. And so the judgment might be attributed to the will and not to knowledge, which by its nature is cold. ~ Arthur Schopenhauer

At the very best, a mind enclosed in language is in prison. It is limited to the number of relations which words can make simultaneously present to it; and remains in ignorance of thoughts which involve the combination of a greater number. These thoughts are outside language, they are unformulable, although they are perfectly rigorous and clear and although every one of the relations they involve is capable of precise expression in words. So the mind moves in a closed space of partial truth, which may be larger or smaller, without ever being able so much as to glance at what is outside. ~ Simone Weil

The field is a halfway house, halfway between the detail of those intimately known places and the ignorance of a landscape view ... The essence of a field is that the cultural accommodates the natural there. The human being makes room for and makes use of those organisms that are not him. In that way the field is a poem to symbiosis, and a human contract with the natural. ~ Adam Nicolson

I envy your ignorance, I hear that it's bliss. ~ Ani DiFranco

Yet like many other human traits that made sense in past ages but cause trouble in the modern age, the knowledge illusion has its downside. The world is becoming ever more complex, and people fail to realise just how ignorant they are of what's going on. Consequently some who know next to nothing about meteorology or biology nevertheless propose policies regarding climate change and genetically modified crops, while others hold extremely strong views about what should be done in Iraq or Ukraine without being able to locate these countries on a map. People rarely appreciate their ignorance, because they lock themselves inside an echo chamber of like-minded friends and self-confirming newsfeeds, where their beliefs are constantly reinforced and seldom challenged.
Providing people with more and better information is unlikely to improve matters. Scientists hope to dispel wrong views by better science education, and pundits hope to sway public opinion on issues such as Obamacare or global warming by presenting the public with accurate facts and expert reports. Such hopes are grounded in a misunderstanding of how humans actually think. Most of our views are shaped by communal groupthink rather than individual rationality, and we hold on to these views out of group loyalty. Bombarding people with facts and exposing their individual ignorance is likely to backfire. Most people don't like too many facts, and they certainly don't like to feel stupid. Don't be so sure that you can ~ Yuval Noah Harari

But I had learned long ago that you actually probably don't want to know what kind of guy your besties think you ought to be with. It always says more as much about what they thing of you as what they think of him, and I find a certain comfort in being ignorant of what my pals might envision for me. ~ Stacey Ballis

Ignorance breeds fear. Tell people the truth. Trust them to keep their heads. ~ Olivia Manning

A little knowledge would unlock the gates to vast and unsuspected gates of ignorance. ~ Ruth Downie

Opinion is the medium between knowledge and ignorance. ~ Plato

The burden of knowledge is lighter than the joy of ignorance. ~ Ogwo David Emenike

It is literally true that millions come easier to a trader after he knows how to trade, than hundreds did in the days of his ignorance. ~ Jesse Lauriston Livermore

Capitalism is just a front lined big word people use to hide their ignorance in their sophisticated clothing. People have a full spectrum of words to snub their part of the problem to console that they are not the cause of a callous situation, so they cannot be a part of the solution. ~ M. T. Panchal

In the end, the innate desire of all people for truth, justice, and human understanding must triumph over ignorance and despair. ~ Dalai Lama XIV

Among true and real friends, all is common; and were ignorance and envy and superstition banished from the world, all mankind would be friend. ~ Percy Bysshe Shelley

Delusion will vanish as the light becomes more and more effulgent, load after load of ignorance will vanish, and then will come a time when all else has disappeared and the sun alone shines. ~ Swami Vivekananda

them incognito. They presumed to inform Jesus about the events of the crucifixion and showed obvious impatience with His apparent ignorance of the matters. When they related the report of the women concerning the resurrection, Christ rebuked them:
"O foolish ones, and slow of heart to believe all that the prophets have spoken! Was it not necessary that the Christ should suffer these things and enter into his glory?" And beginning with Moses and all the Prophets, he interpreted to them in all the Scriptures the things concerning himself.
When the two had their eyes opened ~ R.C. Sproul

you cloak your offence by ignorance, saying that you did not know my determination in this matter. it is a double offence to do ill and color it so. ~ Julia Fox

Reading is a mere makeshift for original thinking. ~ Arthur Schopenhauer

Intelligence without wisdom is a like a car without a steering wheel. You can drive it as long as you don't consider steering part of driving. ~ Craig D. Lounsbrough

To arrive where you are, to get from where you are not,
You must go by a way wherein there is no ecstasy.
In order to arrive at what you do not know
You must go by a way which is the way of ignorance.
In order to possess what you do not possess
You must go by the way of dispossession.
In order to arrive at what you are not
You must go through the way in which you are not.
And what you do not know is the only thing you know
And what you own is what you do not own
And where you are is where you are not. ~ T. S. Eliot

... ongoing care for the soul rather than seek for a cure appreciates the mystery of human suffering and does not offer the illusion of a problem-free life.
I sees every fall into ignorance and confusion as an opportunity to discover that the beast residing at the center of the labyrinth is also an angel.
To approach this paradoxial point of tension where adjustment and abnormality meet is to move closer to the realization of our mystery-filled, star-born nature.
It is a beast this thing that stirs in the core of our being, but it is also the star of our innermost nature.
We have to care for this suffering with extreme reverence so that in our fear and anger at the beast, we do not overlock the star.
~Thomas Moore *Care of the Soul* ~ Thomas Moore

The cause of laughter is simply the sudden perception of the incongruity between a concept and the real project. ~ Arthur Schopenhauer

Sanity can take one of only two forms: that of ignorance, or denial. ~ Derek R. Audette

As regards your government of yourself and your household, Sancho, my first piece of advice is to be clean and to cut your fingernails, and not to let them grow long, as some people do, moved by ignorance to believe that long nails make their hand look beautiful, as if those appendages, those excrescences that they leave uncut have any right to be called fingernails at all, because they are more like talons of a kestrel: a monstrous and filthy abuse. ~ Miguel De Cervantes Saavedra

Herein is the evil of ignorance, that he who is neither good nor wise is nevertheless satisfied with himself: he had no desire for that of which he feels no want. ~ Plato

Recognising such dimensions implicit to the reading experience can distract from the immediacy of our response; it can substitute literary archaeology for novelistic reality. That is one pole. But the other extreme is equally limiting. By failing to realise the issues involved in communicating with fictional modes that are different
to our own, in effect we do not read in the fullest sense. Between intellectual pedantry and cultivated ignorance I would pose a third approach to reading - that of the informed imagination. After occupying this position true evaluation can begin. ~ Ian Gregor

And, as a general rule, it is more advisable to show your intelligence by saying nothing than by speaking out; for silence is a matter of prudence whilst speech has something in it of vanity ~ Arthur Schopenhauer

One who preserves all the exterior decencies of ignorance. ~ Samuel Foote

Mystery is delightful, but unscientific, since it depends upon ignorance. ~ Bertrand Russell

Against logic there is no armor like ignorance. ~ Laurence J. Peter

She was a nice person, she really was, until someone ignorant decided to force that ignorance in her face, and then she just couldn't hold back. ~ Lora Leigh

When we read, another person thinks for us: we merely repeat his mental process. In learning to write, the pupil goes over with his pen what the teacher has outlined in pencil: so in reading; the greater part of the work of thought is already done for us. This is why it relieves us to take up a book after being occupied with our own thoughts. And in reading, the mind is, in fact, only the playground of another's thoughts. So it comes about that if anyone spends almost the whole day in reading, and by way of relaxation devotes the intervals to some thoughtless pastime, he gradually loses the capacity for thinking; just as the man who always rides, at last forgets how to walk. This is the case with many learned persons: they have read themselves stupid. ~ Arthur Schopenhauer

Knowledge will forever govern ignorance, and a people who mean to be their own governors, must arm themselves with the power knowledge gives. A popular government without popular information or the means of acquiring it, is but a prologue to a farce or a tragedy or perhaps both ~ James Madison

The ignorance we're ignorant of is the ignorance most difficult to remedy. ~ Leah Hager Cohen

A town with many men who are less educated and as such ignorant of the real solution to the woes of their society has the same problem as a town with many intellectuals and yet with many problems ~ Ernest Agyemang Yeboah

I don't think you see your minds. I think you see your thoughts; you see your desires; you see your relatives, friends, lovers, enemies. I don't think you see your mind. You think of the mind as the clutter. ~ Frederick Lenz

afflictions are classed as peripheral mental factors and are not themselves any of the six main minds [eye, ear, nose, tongue, body and mental consciousnesses]. however, when any of the afflicting mental factors becomes manifest, a main mind [a mental consciousness] comes under its influence, goes wherever the affliction leads it, and 'accumulates' a bad action.

there are a great many different kinds of afflictions, but the chief of them are desire, hatred, pride, wrong view and so forth. of these, desire and hatred are chief. because of an initial attachment to oneself, hatred arises when something undesirable occurs. further, through being attached to oneself the pride that holds one to be superior arises, and similarly when one has no knowledge of something, a wrong view that holds the object of this knowledge to be non-existent arises.

how do self-attachment and so forth arise in such great force? because of beginningless conditioning, the mind tightly holds to 'i, i' even in dreams, and through the power of this conception, self-attachment and so forth occur. this false conception of 'i' arises because of one's lack of knowledge concerning the mode of existence of things. the fact that all objects are empty of inherent existence is obscured and one conceives things to exist inherently; the strong conception of 'i' derives from this. therefore, the conception that phenomena inherently exist is the afflicting ignorance that is the ultimate root of all ~ Dalai Lama XIV

The tree of knowledge is not the tree of life! And yet can we cast out of our spirits all the good or evil poured into them by so many learned generations? Ignorance cannot be learned. ~ Gerard De Nerval

Any book, which is at all important, should be reread immediately ~ Arthur Schopenhauer

It's difficult to dispel arrogance if you retain ignorance. ~ Ken Burns

The measure of an education is that you acquire some idea of the extent of your ignorance. ~ Christopher Hitchens

Madman, thou errest. I say, there is no darkness but ignorance, in which thou art more puzzled than the Egyptians in their fog. ~ William Shakespeare

Never say, "O Lord, I am a miserable sinner." Who will help you? You are the help of the universe. What in this universe can help you? What can prevail over you? You are the God of the universe; where can you seek for help? Never help came from anywhere but from yourself. In your ignorance, every prayer that you made and that was answered, you thought was answered by some Being, but you answered the prayer yourself unknowingly. The help came from yourself, and you fondly imagined that someone was sending help to you. There is no help for you outside of yourself; you are the creator of the universe. Like the silkworm, you have built a cocoon around yourself. Who will save you? Burst your own cocoon and come out as a beautiful butterfly, as the free soul. Then alone you will see Truth. ~ Swami Vivekananda