When a scientist doesn't know the answer to a problem, he is ignorant. When he has a hunch as to what the result is, he is uncertain. And when he is pretty darn sure of what the result is going to be, he is still in some doubt. We have found it of paramount importance that in order to progress we must recognize our ignorance and leave room for doubt. Scientific knowledge is a body of statements of varying degrees of certainty - some most unsure, some nearly sure, but none absolutely certain.
But revealing yourself as ignorant apparently gives one extraordinary credibility on the left.
Only a blind man can easily define what light is. When you do not know, you are bold. Ignorance is always bold; knowledge hesitates. And the more you know, the more you feel that the ground underneath is dissolving. The more you know, the more you feel how ignorant you are.
We must abandon the prevalent belief in the superior wisdom of the ignorant.
Ignorant, unconscious and dishonourable part of a society want and like kings, dictators, padishahs and all sort of despots; educated, conscious and honourable part of the same society hate and refuse monarchs, tyrants, oppressors and any kind of autocrats!
Every one who has a heart, however ignorant of architecture he may be, feels the transcendent beauty and poetry of the mediaeval churches.
True science teaches, above all, to doubt and be ignorant.
Why is it that the less intelligence people have, the more spiritual they are? They seem to fill all the vacant, ignorant spaces in their heads with soul. Which explains how it is that the less knowledge they have, the more religion.
The only death I fear is dying ignorant.
Philosophy! Empty thinking by ignorant conceited men who think they can digest without eating!
A pedant holds more to instruct us with what he knows, than of what we are ignorant.
Travel brings wisdom only to the wise. It renders the ignorant more ignorant than ever.
Young people are the same as they always were. They are just as ignorant.
The oppressed want at any cost to resemble the oppressors. " "They call themselves ignorant and say the 'professor' is the one who has knowledge and to whom they should listen. " "Almost never do they realize that they, too, 'know things' they have learned in their relations with the world.
Why is it that we remember with difficulty and without difficulty forget? Learn with difficulty and without difficulty remain ignorant?
Self-assertion may deceive the ignorant for a time; but when the noise dies away, we cut open the drum, and find it was emptiness that made the music.
We are quite ignorant of the condition of energy in bodies generally. We know how much gas goes in, and how much comes out, and know whether at entrance and exit it is in the form of heat or of work. That is all.
I find it hard myself to feel justified to sing in a very politically direct way about war or social conditions because I feel so ignorant of a lot of it.
I have never met a man so ignorant that I couldn't learn something from him.
So most skeptics who criticize us are really just misinformed and kind of ignorant. They're just assuming something about us. We're quite critical ourselves, but we're here to help people.