Jonathan Safran Foer Quotes

America is in a state of somnolence. It's an avoidance of paranoia through ignoring reality.

Seven national crimes: 1. I don't think. 2. I don't know. 3. I don't care. 4. I am too busy. 5. I leave well enough alone. 6. I have no time to read and find out. 7. I am not interested.

People have managed to avert their eyes and hope for the best.

The easiest thing to do in the world is pull the covers up over your head and go back to sleep.

Bad things happen when problems are protected by a force field of tediousness.

Because you can be lazy if you don't know the truth.

Ignorance can be improved; willful ignorance and inaction is inexcusable.

Lulled by stupefying illusions, the world is asleep in the cradle of infancy, dreaming away the hours.

Most people sleep themselves stupid.

If I can avoid the mirror when I brush my teeth in the morning, I will. I find security and safety in the most profound degree of ignorance. If you can just stay ignorant of almost everything you'll be OK. It's fine to stay informed and look at things, but to judge things will bog you down.

I am always amazed by people who know something is wrong but still insist on ignoring it, as if that will somehow make it go away. They spare themselves the confrontation, but end up boiling in resentment anyway.

I had to keep on acting deaf if i wanted to hear at all.

Fools multiply when wise men are silent.

They are asleep. This is the condition they prefer. They are afraid of the world and sleep is a way of dealing with their fear. Someday they will wake. Perhaps something frightful will happen. Indeed, there is no better invitation to the frightful than ignorance - that is, sleep. (29)

Without knowledge and understanding, one tends to become a passive spectator rather than an active participant in the great decisions of our time.

Who is so deafe, as he that will not hear?

The commonest ivory tower is that of the average man, the state of passivity towards experience.

I have heard of your paintings too, well enough; God has given you one face, and you make yourselves another: you jig, you amble, and you lisp, and nick-name God's creatures, and make your wantonness your ignorance. Go to, I'll no more on't; it hath made me mad.

Those who pretend to know what they don't, will be thought ignorant of even what they know.

Bad things happen when good people pretend nothing is wrong.

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

None so blind, so deaf, as those that will not hear, that will not see.

Darkness feeds on apathy.

Where dost thou careless lie, Buried in ease and sloth? Knowledge that sleeps, doth die; And this security, It is the common moth, That eats on wits and arts, and oft destroys them both.