CHRISTOPHER HITCHENS
Love, Poverty, and War: Journey and Essays

The search for Nirvana, like the search for Utopia or the end of history or the classless society, is ultimately a futile and dangerous one. It involves, if it does not necessitate, the sleep of reason. There is no escape from anxiety and struggle.

ISAAC ASIMOV

Anti-intellectualism has been a constant thread winding its way through our political and cultural life, nurtured by the false notion that democracy means that “my ignorance is just as good as your knowledge.” 

A. R. MOXON

Historians have a word for Germans who joined the Nazi party, not because they hated Jews, but out of a hope for restored patriotism, or a sense of economic anxiety, or a hope to preserve their religious values, or dislike of their opponents, or raw political opportunism, or convenience, or ignorance, or greed.

That word is "Nazi."

Nobody cares about their motives anymore.

MARGARET ATWOOD
The Handmaid's Tale

Ignoring isn’t the same as ignorance, you have to work at it.

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MARGARET ATWOOD
The Handmaid's Tale

Better never means better for everyone… It always means worse, for some.

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MARGARET ATWOOD
The Handmaid's Tale

A rat in a maze is free to go anywhere, as long as it stays inside the maze.

JAMES MADISON
Fourth US President
Signer of US Constitution and known as "Father of the Constitution"

Religious bondage shackles and debilitates the mind and unfits it for every noble enterprise, every expanded prospect.

What influence, in fact, have ecclesiastical establishments had on society? In some instances they have been seen to erect a spiritual tyranny on the ruins of the civil authority; in many instances they have been seen upholding the thrones of political tyranny; in no instance have they been the guardians of the liberties of the people. Rulers who wish to subvert the public liberty may have found an established clergy convenient allies.

During almost fifteen centuries has the legal establishment of Christianity been on trial. What have been its fruits? More or less in all places, pride and indolence in the Clergy, ignorance and servility in the laity, in both, superstition, bigotry and persecution.

THOMAS JEFFERSON
Third US President
Author of Declaration of Independence

Christianity, neither is, nor ever was, a part of the common law. The clergy, by getting themselves established by law and ingrafted into the machine of government, have been a very formidable engine against the civil and religious rights of man.

History, I believe, furnishes no example of a priest-ridden people maintaining a free civil government. This marks the lowest grade of ignorance of which their civil as well as religious leaders will always avail themselves for their own purposes

In every country and in every age, the priest has been hostile to liberty. He is always in alliance with the despot, abetting his abuses in return for protection to his own. It is easier to acquire wealth and power by this combination than by deserving them, and to effect this, they have perverted the purest religion ever preached to man into mystery and jargon, unintelligible to all mankind, and therefore the safer engine for their purposes.

The day will come when the mystical generation of Jesus, by the Supreme Being as his father, in the womb of a virgin, will be classed with the fable of the generation of Minerva in the brain of Jupiter.

KATHLEEN PATEL

With ignorance comes fear, from fear comes bigotry. 

DEAN KOONTZ

The human species was too fond of lying, cheating, envy, ignorance, self-pity, self-righteousness, and utopian visions that always led to mass murder. But - until and if it destroyed itself - it harbored the potential to become nobler, to take responsibility for its actions, to live and let live, and to earn the stewardship of the earth.

BÉLA TARR
From a letter hung in front of the Hungarian Parliament

We have brought the planet to the brink of catastrophe with our greediness and our unlimited ignorance. With the horrible wars we waged with the goal of robbing the people there. Now we are confronted with the victims of our acts. We must ask the question: who are we, and what morality do we represent when we build a fence to keep out these people?

GEORGE ORWELL
1984

It was possible, no doubt, to imagine a society in which wealth, in the sense of personal possessions and luxuries, should be evenly distributed, while power remained in the hands of a small privileged caste. But in practice such a society could not long remain stable. For if leisure and security were enjoyed by all alike, the great mass of human beings who are normally stupefied by poverty would become literate and would learn to think for themselves; and when once they had done this, they would sooner or later realise that the privileged minority had no function, and they would sweep it away. In the long run, a hierarchical society was only possible on a basis of poverty and ignorance.

ISAAC ASIMOV

There is a cult of ignorance in the United States, and there has always been. The strain of anti-intellectualism has been a constant thread winding its way through our political and cultural life, nurtured by the false notion that democracy means that "my ignorance is just as good as your knowledge."

PERCY BYSSHE SHELLEY
"To A Skylark"

____________________

Hail to thee, blithe Spirit!

Bird thou never wert,

That from Heaven, or near it,

Pourest thy full heart

In profuse strains of unpremeditated art.

Higher still and higher

From the earth thou springest

Like a cloud of fire;

The blue deep thou wingest,

And singing still dost soar, and soaring ever singest.

In the golden lightning

Of the sunken sun,

O'er which clouds are bright'ning,

Thou dost float and run;

Like an unbodied joy whose race is just begun.

The pale purple even

Melts around thy flight;

Like a star of Heaven,

In the broad day-light

Thou art unseen, but yet I hear thy shrill delight,

Keen as are the arrows

Of that silver sphere,

Whose intense lamp narrows

In the white dawn clear

Until we hardly see, we feel that it is there.

All the earth and air

With thy voice is loud,

As, when night is bare,

From one lonely cloud

The moon rains out her beams, and Heaven is overflow'd.

What thou art we know not;

What is most like thee?

From rainbow clouds there flow not

Drops so bright to see

As from thy presence showers a rain of melody.

Like a Poet hidden

In the light of thought,

Singing hymns unbidden,

Till the world is wrought

To sympathy with hopes and fears it heeded not:

Like a high-born maiden

In a palace-tower,

Soothing her love-laden

Soul in secret hour

With music sweet as love, which overflows her bower:

Like a glow-worm golden

In a dell of dew,

Scattering unbeholden

Its aëreal hue

Among the flowers and grass, which screen it from the view:

Like a rose embower'd

In its own green leaves,

By warm winds deflower'd,

Till the scent it gives

Makes faint with too much sweet those heavy-winged thieves:

Sound of vernal showers

On the twinkling grass,

Rain-awaken'd flowers,

All that ever was

Joyous, and clear, and fresh, thy music doth surpass.

Teach us, Sprite or Bird,

What sweet thoughts are thine:

I have never heard

Praise of love or wine

That panted forth a flood of rapture so divine.

Chorus Hymeneal,

Or triumphal chant,

Match'd with thine would be all

But an empty vaunt,

A thing wherein we feel there is some hidden want.

What objects are the fountains

Of thy happy strain?

What fields, or waves, or mountains?

What shapes of sky or plain?

What love of thine own kind? what ignorance of pain?

With thy clear keen joyance

Languor cannot be:

Shadow of annoyance

Never came near thee:

Thou lovest: but ne'er knew love's sad satiety.

Waking or asleep,

Thou of death must deem

Things more true and deep

Than we mortals dream,

Or how could thy notes flow in such a crystal stream?

We look before and after,

And pine for what is not:

Our sincerest laughter

With some pain is fraught;

Our sweetest songs are those that tell of saddest thought.

Yet if we could scorn

Hate, and pride, and fear;

If we were things born

Not to shed a tear,

I know not how thy joy we ever should come near.

Better than all measures

Of delightful sound,

Better than all treasures

That in books are found,

Thy skill to poet were, thou scorner of the ground!

Teach me half the gladness

That thy brain must know,

Such harmonious madness

From my lips would flow

The world should listen then, as I am listening now.

W. E. B. DU BOIS

____________________

Either America will destroy ignorance or ignorance will destroy the United States.

SAMUEL BECKETT

"What would I do without this world"

____________________

what would I do without this world faceless incurious

where to be lasts but an instant where every instant

spills in the void the ignorance of having been

without this wave where in the end

body and shadow together are engulfed

what would I do without this silence where the murmurs die

the pantings the frenzies towards succour towards love

without this sky that soars

above its ballast dust

what would I do what I did yesterday and the day before

peering out of my deadlight looking for another

wandering like me eddying far from all the living

in a convulsive space

among the voices voiceless

that throng my hiddenness

 H. P. LOVECRAFT
____________________

The most merciful thing in the world, I think, is the inability of the human mind to correlate all its contents. We live on a placid island of ignorance in the midst of black seas of infinity, and it was not meant that we should voyage far. The sciences, each straining in its own direction, have hitherto harmed us little; but some day the piecing together of dissociated knowledge will open up such terrifying vistas of reality, and of our frightful position therein, that we shall either go mad from the revelation or flee from the light into the peace and safety of a new Dark Age.

GUO GU

The Essence of Chan: A Guide to Life and Practice According to the Teachings of Bodhidharma

____________________

If we want to know our past, we need only look at the present. If we want to know our future, we also look at the present. Why is it that siblings in the same family sometimes have very different lives, one as a victim and the other as a victimizer? Why is it that, from the same parents, one child follows a spiritual path, while the other wallows in desire, hatred, and ignorance? Why do people live in constant insecurity, victimizing themselves at every opportunity? It is because each of us carries different karmic baggage. We’ve been throwing all the karma that we have ever created into this bag. What we experience in our life is the ripening of seeds in our karmic bag.

ANNE SEXTON

"The Poet of Ignorance"

____________________

Perhaps the earth is floating,

I do not know.

Perhaps the stars are little paper cutups

made by some giant scissors,

I do not know.

Perhaps the moon is a frozen tear,

I do not know.

Perhaps God is only a deep voice,

heard by the deaf,

I do not know.

Perhaps I am no one.

True, I have a body

and I cannot escape from it.

I would like to fly out of my head,

but that is out of the question.

It is written on the tablet of destiny

that I am stuck here in this human form.

That being the case

I would like to call attention to my problem.

There is an animal inside me,

clutching fast to my heart,

a huge crab.

The doctors of Boston

have thrown up their hands.

They have tried scalpels,

needles, poison gases and the like.

The crab remains.

It is a great weight.

I try to forget it, go about my business,

cook the broccoli, open and shut books,

brush my teeth and tie my shoes.

I have tried prayer

but as I pray the crab grips harder

and the pain enlarges.

I had a dream once,

perhaps it was a dream,

that the crab was my ignorance of God.

But who am I to believe in dreams?

ALDOUS HUXLEY

Ends and Means

____________________

Most ignorance is vincible ignorance; we don’t know because we don’t want to know. It is our will that decides how and upon what subjects we shall use our intelligence.

CARL SAGAN
Varieties of Scientific Experience

Does trying to understand the universe at all betray a lack of humility? I believe it is true that humility is the only just response in a confrontation with the universe, but not a humility that prevents us from seeking the nature of the universe we are admiring. If we seek that nature, then love can be informed by truth instead of being based on ignorance or self-deception. If a Creator God exists, would He or She or It or whatever the appropriate pronoun is, prefer a kind of sodden blockhead who worships while understanding nothing? Or would He prefer His votaries to admire the real universe in all its intricacy? I would suggest that science is, at least in part, informed worship.

CHAGDUD TULKU RINPOCHE

What is the meaning of butter lamp offerings? We do not offer the lamps because enlightened beings need to see them. Rather, the offering of light is a means of dispelling the darkness of our own ignorance, giving rise to clarity and wisdom.

We offer them with the wish that their light will illuminate the lower realms and the bardo, relieving the torment of beings who suffer in darkness. We also aspire that all beings will develop greater mental clarity in order to discover the causes of long-lasting happiness in virtuous actions of body, speech, and mind.

Finally, we offer them so that the inner light of great knowing will arise in all beings’ minds and remove the darkness of ignorance and intellectual obscurations.