57 Quotes About Willful-ignorance

More generally, as I shall repeat in Chapter 8, one of the truly bad effects of religion is that it teaches us that it is a virtue to be satisfied with not understanding.

A fool can't help but be a fool, but when others follow, he makes a fool of us all.

Only a blind man could have lived through these last years without seeing what was bearing down upon us; so I made myself blind as I could manage. I wanted to believe the worst was behind me, and I found an easy way to make it so. I simply turned my back on what was coming.

When all this is over, people will try to blame the Germans alone, and the Germans will try to blame the Nazis alone, and the Nazis will try to blame Hitler alone. They will make him bear the sins of the world. But it's not true. You suspected what was happening, and so did I. It was already too late over a year ago. I caused a reporter to lose his job because you told me to. He was deported. The day I did that I made my little contribution to civilization, the only one that matters.

I think that the root of Willful Ignorance, is Fear. We'll return to that in a minute. But the root of Fear, is Simple Ignorance, at least I think that our original Fear is rooted in simply not understanding the World around us: not knowing.

The more you can escape from how horrible things really are, the less it's going to bother you...and then, the worse things get.

Willful ignorance is blissful only in the mind of a remarkable fool.

There are two ways to be fooled. One is to believe what isn't true; the other is to refuse to believe what is true.

. . . there is a wish in the heart of mankind to be distracted and confused. Truth is but one attraction, and not always the most powerful.