Irvin D. Yalom Quotes

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.

Faith is a poison that paralyzes the mind. In all the days of your life, seek knowledge!

There are none so ignorant but they may be taught. So, too, are there none so unfortunate in their understanding of the true and high relation of the sexes as not to be amenable to the right kind of instruction.

I make this chief distinction between religion and superstition, that the latter is founded on ignorance, the former on knowledge.

when knowledge comes in at the door, fear and superstition fly out of the window.

The only good is knowledge, and the only evil is ignorance.

Books are as useful to a stupid person as a mirror is useful to a blind person.

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

To remove ignorance is an important branch of benevolence.

Education, n.: That which discloses to the wise and disguises from the foolish their lack of understanding.

In complete darkness, it is only knowledge and wisdom that separates us.

I willingly speak to those who know, but for those who do not know I forget.

Knowledge is only one half. Faith is the other.

No, I'm no enemy to learning; it hurts not me.

To know, is to know that you know nothing. That is the meaning of true knowledge.

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.

Human knowledge is dark and uncertain; philosophy is dark, astrology is dark, and geometry is dark.

There is no sin but ignorance.

There are two things which cannot be attacked in front: ignorance and narrow-mindedness. They can only be shaken by the simple development of the contrary qualities. They will not bear discussion.

The educated differ from the uneducated as much as the living from the dead.

Ah! destructive Ignorance, what shall be done to chase thee out of the World!

Knowledge without education is but armed injustice.

A quest for knowledge is not a war with faith; spirituality is not usually an infelicitous amalgam of superstition and philistinism; and moral relativism, taken outside midfield, leads inexorably both to heresy and to secular wickedness, which are often identical.

The knowledge from an enlightened person breaks on the hard rocks of ignorance.

Education: the inculcation of the incomprehensible into the indifferent by the incompetent.