Isaac Asimov Quotes

Knowing that we don't know it's humility; thinking that we know what we don't know, is sickness.

I'm really not a big rereader - I'm too aware of my own ignorance.

When did ignorance become a point of view?

Our conjectures pass upon us for truths; we will know what we do not know, and often, what we cannot know: so mortifying to our pride is the base suspicion of ignorance.

It is worse still to be ignorant of your ignorance.

Knowledge is the barrier to knowing. When knowledge is dropped, knowing flowers.

... there is no shame in not knowing. The problem arises when irrational thought and attendant behavior fill the vacuum left by ignorance.

The majority of people have no understanding of the things with which they daily meet, nor, when instructed, do they have any right knowledge of them, although to themselves they seem to have.

Knowing what you don't know is more useful than being brilliant.

Belief gets in the way of learning.

There was a survey done a few years ago that affected me greatly. it was discovered that intelligent people either estimate their intelligence accurately or slightly underestimate themselves, but stupid people overestimate their intelligence and by huge margins. (And these were things like straight up math tests, not controversial IQ tests.)

The more you know, the more you know you don't know and the more you know that you don't know.

Belief is in ignorance. If you know, you know. And it is good that if you don’t know, know that you don’t know — the belief can deceive you. The belief can create an atmosphere in your mind, where, without knowing, you start thinking that you know. Belief is not trust, and the more strongly you say that you believe totally, the more you are afraid of the doubt within you.

There are genuine mysteries in the world that mark the limits of human knowing and thinking. Wisdom is fortified, not destroyed, by understanding its limitations. Ignorance does not make a fool as surely as self-deception.

And then he thought: Is this how idiots rationalize their stupidity to themselves?

The more a man knows, the more willing he is to learn-the less a man knows, the more positive he is that he knows everything.

Men are most apt to believe what they least understand.

If men were stubborn just in proportion as they were right, stubbornness would take her seat among the virtues; but men are generally stubborn just in proportion as they are ignorant and wrong.

Our comforting conviction that the world makes sense rests on a secure foundation: our almost unlimited ability to ignore our ignorance.

We must abandon the prevalent belief in the superior wisdom of the ignorant.

...not everyone is willing to defend a position of 'not knowing.' There is no virtue in ignorance for its own sake.

Ask yourself whether you have earned the right to have an opinion. Opinions are easy to produce, so bad ones abound. Knowing that you don't know something is nearly as valuable as knowing it. The worst situation is thinking you know something when you don't.

He who thinks he knows, doesn't know. He who knows that he doesn't know, knows.

The only thing I know for sure is how much I do not know.

Intelligent people make many mistakes because they cannot believe the world is really as foolish as it is.