George Eliot Quotes

Without education we are in a horrible and deadly danger of taking educated people seriously.

Zeal without knowledge is fire without light.

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

If You Think Education Is Expensive, Wait Until You See How Much Ignorance Costs in the 21st Century.

I said I 'liked' being half-educated; you were so much more 'surprised' at everything when you were ignorant.

It gave a tremendous level of self-confidence, that through exploration and learning one could understand seemingly very complex things in one's environment.

A man who chooses not to read is just as ignorant as a man who cannot read.

Most people know nothing about learning; many despise it. Dummies reject as too hard whatever is not dumb.

I know that knowledge and intelligence are not the same thing - but they do live in the same neighborhood. I know once again, firsthand, the joy of learning.

... there are no chains so galling as the chains of ignorance--no fetters so binding as those that bind the soul, and exclude it from the vast field of useful and scientific knowledge. O, had I received the advantages of early education, my ideas would, ere now, have expanded far and wide; but, alas! I possess nothing but moral capability--no teachings but the teachings of the Holy Spirit.

If ever there was a cause, if ever there can be a cause, worthy to be upheld by all of toil or sacrifice that the human heart can endure, it is the cause of Education. It has intrinsic and indestructible merits. It holds the welfare of mankind in its embrace, as the protecting arms of a mother hold her infant to her bosom. The very ignorance and selfishness which obstructs its path are the strongest arguments for its promotion, for it furnishes the only adequate means for their removal.

The sure foundations of the state are laid in knowledge, not in ignorance; and every sneer at education, at culture, at book learning, which is the recorded wisdom of the experience of mankind, is the demagogue's sneer at intelligent liberty, inviting national degeneracy and ruin.

Despite popular theories, I believe people fall in love based not on good looks or fate but on knowledge. Either they are amazed by something a beloved knows that they themselves do not know; or they discover a common rare knowledge; or they can supply knowledge to someone who's lacking. Hasn't everyone found a strange ignorance in someone beguiling? . . .Nowadays, trendy librarians, wanting to be important, say, Knowledge is power. I know better. Knowledge is love.

The more one endeavors to sound the depths of his ignorance the deeper the chasm appears.

Knowing can be a curse on a person's life. I'd traded in a pack of lies for a pack of truth, and I didn't know which one was heavier.

Knowledge is finite. Wonder is infinite.

The veil is slowly rising, but as regards innumerable questions we must be content to remain in ignorance.

I'd take the awe of understanding over the awe of ignorance any day.

For life is a fire burning along a piece of string--or is it a fuse to a powder keg which we call God?--and the string is what we don't know, our Ignorance, and the trail of ash, which, if a gust of wind does not come, keeps the structure of the string, is History, man's Knowledge, but it is dead, and when the fire has burned up all the string, then man's Knowledge will be equal to God's Knowledge and there won't be any fire, which is Life. Or if the string leads to a powder keg, then there will be a terrific blast of fire, and even the trail of ash will be blown completely away.

I'm not trying to frighten you, but only a fool makes predictions based on ignorance; I am not that sort of fool.

We ought not to believe those who today, adopting a philosophical air and with a tone of superiority, prophesy the decline of culter and are content with the unknowable in a self-satisfied way. For us there is no unknowable, and in my opinion there is also non whatsoever for the natural sciences. In place of this foolish unknowable, let our watchword on the contrary be: we must know - we shall know.

George Kimble said, 'The only thing dark about Africa is our ignorance of it.' So let's start shedding light on this amazing eclectic continent that has so much to offer.

One of the benefits of a bad education is the constant pleasure of discovery.

Education is our passport to the future.