Quotes · Skopia

28 quotes

SortEditorial Year Length

Topic·Ignorance✕clear

Courtroom speech · Speech · Philosophical literature

I know that I do not know.

Plato, Apology · 399 BC

★ 8.1

Philosophical dialogue · Dialogue · Philosophical literature

Behold! human beings living in an underground den... Like ourselves... They see only their own shadows, or the shadows of one another, which the fire throws on the opposite wall of the cave.

Plato, Republic · 375 BC

★ 8.0

Religious literature

None so blind as those that will not see.

Commentaries (Henry) · 1706

★ 5.3

A little learning is a dangerous thing; Drink deep, or taste not the Pierian spring: There shallow draughts intoxicate the brain, And drinking largely sobers us again.

An Essay on Criticism · 1711

★ 5.2

Courtroom speech · Speech · Philosophical literature

To fear death, my friends, is only to think ourselves wise, without being wise: for it is to think that we know what we do not know.

Plato, Apology · 399 BC

★ 4.0

Poem · Didactic poem · Philosophical literature

Life is one long struggle in the dark.

On the Nature of Things · 55 BC

★ 3.9

Epigram · Philosophical literature

Men blaspheme what they do not know.

Pensees · 1662

★ 3.9

Political literature

At every step the natural light which illuminates their path grows dimmer and less secure; and that, in spite of all their efforts, they have as yet only discovered a small number of conflicting notions, on which the mind of man has been tossed about for thousands of years, without either laying a firmer grasp on truth, or finding novelty even in its errors.

Alexis de Tocqueville

Democracy in America · 1840

★ 3.9

Play · Tragic play · Greek theater

The happiest life consists in ignorance.

Ajax · 442 BC

★ 3.8

Philosophical literature

To be ignorant of what happened before you were born is to be ever a child.

46 BC

★ 3.8

Poem · Religious literature · Epic poem

The first and wisest of them all professed To know this only, that he nothing knew.

Paradise Regained · 1671

★ 3.8

There’s none so blind as they that won’t see.

1738

★ 3.8

If a nation expects to be ignorant and free, in a state of civilization, it expects what never was and never will be.

Thomas Jefferson

1816

★ 3.8

Scientific literature

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.

The Descent of Man · 1871

★ 3.8

There is nothing makes a man suspect much, more than to know little.

1625

★ 3.7

Film · Psychological drama (film) · Drama (film) · Psychological drama · Drama

You're just a kid, you don't have the faintest idea what you're talkin' about.

Good Will Hunting · 1997

★ 3.7

Film · Superhero (film) · Superhero

Mankind was not evil, just...uninformed.

Professor Charles Xavier

X-Men · 2000

★ 3.7

To be conscious that you are ignorant is a great step to knowledge.

Benjamin Disraeli

Sybil · 1845

★ 3.6

To know anything well involves a profound sensation of ignorance.

Modern Painters · 1856

★ 3.6

The greater the ignorance the greater the dogmatism.

1902

★ 3.5

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