Willful Ignorance Quotes

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.

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

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

People see what they want to see.

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.

[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.

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

A man is responsible for his ignorance.

Informing people about the world's problems opens up the possibility to address them and change them. Anything else is simply willful ignorance. I mean, what the hell should we do? Sit around blowing up balloons? Watching Disney-sponsored movies? I don't think so.

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.

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.

It’s much easier not to know things sometimes.

If most of us remain ignorant of ourselves, it is because self-knowledge is painful and we prefer the pleasures of illusion.

The strain of anti-intellectualism has been a constant thread winding its way through our political and cultural life, nurtured by the false notion that democracy means that "my ignorance is just as good as your knowledge."

Humans see what they want to see.

There is a cult of ignorance in the United States, and there has always been. The strain of anti-intellectualism has been a constant thread winding its way through our political and cultural life, nurtured by the false notion that democracy means that "my ignorance is just as good as your knowledge."

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

The greatest obstacle to discovery is not ignorance - it is the illusion of knowledge.

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

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.

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.

You must find time for reading, or surrender yourself to self-chosen ignorance.

There are two ways to be fooled. One is to believe what isn't true; the other is to refuse to believe what is true.

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

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.

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.

People are stupid; given proper motivation, almost anyone will believe almost anything. BecauHse 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.

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

Being #‎ IGNORANT is not so much a SHAME, as being UNWILLING to LEARN to do things THE #‎ RIGHT WAY.

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

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

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

Ignorance more frequently begets confidence than does knowledge.

. . . 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.

Imagine the people who believe such things and who are not ashamed to ignore, totally, all the patient findings of thinking minds through all the centuries since the Bible was written. And it is these ignorant people, the most uneducated, the most unimaginative, the most unthinking among us, who would make themselves the guides and leaders of us all; who would force their feeble and childish beliefs on us; who would invade our schools and libraries and homes. I personally resent it bitterly.

Because I do not wish to know,” he says. “I prefer to remain unenlightened, to better appreciate the dark.

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.

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.

Facts do not cease to exist because they are ignored.

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

Faith is the great cop-out, the great excuse to evade the need to think.

There's a willful ignorance. We indulge people who are willfully misrepresenting the facts. I don't think those [anti-choice] congresspeople are as much benignly misguided as they are intentionally and willfully ignorant of the facts of reproduction. That lends itself very well to them being ideologically driven and carrying out agendas that, if they were to be really honest about the facts, would be a tougher sell.

The real tragedy of life is when men are afraid of the light.

Real knowledge is to know the extent of one's ignorance.

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

I do not think much of a man who is not wiser today than he was yesterday.

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.