Ignorance more frequently begets confidence than does knowledge: it is those who know little, and not those who know much, who so positively assert that this or that problem will never be solved by science.
The greatest enemy of knowledge is not ignorance, it is the illusion of knowledge.
The history of Western science confirms the aphorism that the great menace to progress is not ignorance but the illusion of knowledge.
Ignorance of ignorance, then, is that self-satisfied state of unawareness in which man, knowing nothing outside the limited area of his physical senses, bumptiously declares there is nothing more to know!
He who knows best knows how little he knows.
To fear death, my friends, is only to think ourselves wise, without being wise: for it is to think that we know what we do not know. For anything that men can tell, death may be the greatest good that can happen to them: but they fear it as if they knew quite well that it was the greatest of evils. And what is this but that shameful ignorance of thinking that we know what we do not know?
Some people will never learn anything, for this reason, because they understand everything too soon.
When you think you're right, you're most likely wrong.
It's not so much religion per se, it's false certainty that worries me, and religion just has more than its fair share of false certainty or dogmatism. I'm really concerned when I see people pretending to know things they clearly cannot know.
It isn't what we don't know that gives us trouble, it's what we know that ain't so.
I had been a Maoist, and then when the Gang of Four was overthrown, I was completely distraught. I was bedridden for three weeks; it was a very painful experience for me. Not only because I had been wrong, but because I felt really embarrassed that I had been lecturing and pontificating with such self-confidence.
Deciding under uncertainty is bad enough, but deciding under an illusion of certainty is catastrophic.
Dogma is invariably wrong, as knowledge is always in a state of transition.
Man is wise only while in search of wisdom; when he imagines he has attained it, he is a fool.
Any belief that puts itself beyond doubt nurtures its own collapse.
There is no man more dangerous than one who does not doubt his own rightness.
The more sure you are, the more wrong you can be.
It was the heart of any scam or fiddle -- keep the punter uncertain, or, if he is certain, make him certain of the wrong thing.
I prefer true but imperfect knowledge, even if it leaves much undetermined and unpredictable, to a pretense of exact knowledge that is likely to be false.
Nothing is more securely lodged than the ignorance of the experts.
Not ignorance, but ignorance of ignorance, is the death of knowledge.
I want to be simple. I think that we try - and we think when we grow up - that we have the truth, because we experience and stuff. But that bullsh*t actually.
In seeking wisdom thou art wise; in imagining that thou hast attained it - thou art a fool.
Do not believe that you alone can be right.The man who thinks that,The man who maintains that only he has the powerTo reason correctly, the gift to speak, the soul-A man like that, when you know him, turns out empty.
I could never accept findings based almost exclusively on mathematics. It ain't ignorance that causes all the trouble in this world. It's the things people know that ain't so.
