Lafcadio Hearn Quotes

Today mythical thinking has fallen into disrepute; we often dismiss it as irrational and self-indulgent. But the imagination is also the faculty that has enabled scientists to bring new knowledge to light and to invent technology that has made us immeasurably more effective.

The end of science is not to prove a theory, but to improve mankind.

One of the greatest joys known to man is to take a flight into ignorance in search of knowledge.

It is no good to try to stop knowledge from going forward. Ignorance is never better than knowledge.

Of course, mankind has made giant steps forward. However, what we know is really very, very little compared to what we still have to know.

There are few earthly things more beautiful than a university a place where those who hate ignorance may strive to know, where those who perceive truth may strive to make others see.

A library, to modify the famous metaphor of Socrates, should be the delivery room for the birth of ideas - a place where history comes to life.

There is always a place I can take someone's curiosity and land where they end up enlightened when we're done. That's my challenge as an educator. No one is dumb who is curious. The people who don't ask questions remain clueless throughout their lives.

I know of no time in human history where ignorance was better than knowledge.

To-day it appears as though it may well be altogether abolished in the future as it has to some extent been mitigated in the past by the unceasing, and as it now appears, unlimited ascent of man to knowledge, and through knowledge to physical power and dominion over Nature.

It is in his knowledge that man has found his greatness and his happiness, the high superiority which he holds over the other animals who inhabit the earth with him, and consequently no ignorance is probably without loss to him, no error without evil.

In expanding the field of knowledge we but increase the horizon of ignorance.

The cause of my life has been to oppose superstition. It's a battle you can't hope to win - it's a battle that's going to go on forever. It's part of the human condition.

The beginning of knowledge is the discovery of something we do not understand.

For the progress of scientific knowledge will lead to a constant increase of expenditure.

There is nothing which can better deserve our patronage than the promotion of science and literature. Knowledge is in every country the surest basis of public happiness.

In those parts of the world where learning and science have prevailed, miracles have ceased; but in those parts of it as are barbarous and ignorant, miracles are still in vogue.

Apollo was designed not to conquer enemies but to conquer ignorance.

If the ignorance of nature gave birth to gods, the knowledge of nature is calculated to destroy them.

Sixty years ago I knew everything. Now I know nothing. Education is a progressive discovery of our own ignorance.

When man seized the loadstone of science, the loadstar of superstition vanished in the clouds.

In the 16th and 17th centuries, as many as 60,000 people were executed in Europe as suspected witches. But it would be nice to think that centuries of advances in science and education have made people less prey to phantasms and falsehoods.

I believe that the future of humanity is in the progress of reason through science. I believe that the pursuit of truth, through science, is the divine ideal which man should propose to himself.

The intellectual advancement of man depends on how often he can exchange an old superstition for a new truth.

For more than twenty-five years my mind had been deeply troubled by the fact that these mechanical and scientific achievements ofman had outrun his intellectual and spiritual power. ...Throughout the Second World War this terrible problem hung in the back of my mind. As I write these words the problem and the danger are as threatening as ever. We hope our nation will survive, but in its effort to survive will it transform itself intellectually and spiritually into the image of the thing against which we fought?