HealthCommentary

Exploring Human Potential

7 & 7: Knowledge vs. Ignorance

REFLECTION:

To be prejudiced is the most fundamental form of ignorance expressed. The bigotry itself is so deeply flawed that it is easily disproved by observation and the expression of children. Great realms of information collected in defense do not change the facts. Foolish is foolish! We know what we know and the opposite as well. The key to breaking through is to understand each other and the facts. This requires effort, time, energy and persistence. But failure to commit these resources is far more expensive. Investment in knowledge is always well spent and represents a permanent gain that cannot be taken away. There is always room for knowledge, for each of us harbors ignorance of some sort which knowledge could displace. Always be at peace with the words “I do not know.” Holding fast to ignorance is proof of stupidity, while embracing and acknowledging ignorance opens one to the joys of learning. Mistakes along the way punctuate growth. Repeating the same mistake renders no additional value. And jumping from the narrow experience of one discreet event to broad confidence in a general truth is too big a jump too soon. Learning is asleep inside each of us waiting to be stirred. Judgment, not statistics, is what we seek because important questions are more susceptible to qualitative answers. We all want to know. For this we write books, to remember, to reflect, to relearn. Thanks for joining us over the past 77 days. Tomorrow is election day.  Many lives are in the balance. This is America. We are a Democracy. VOTE!

MUSES:

Prejudice is the child of ignorance.
William Hazlitt

The mind of a bigot is like the pupil of the eye; the more light you pour upon it, the more it will contract.
Oliver Wendell Holmes, Jr.

We’re drowning in information and starving for knowledge.
Rutherford D. Rogers

If fifty million people say a foolish thing, it is still a foolish thing.
Anatole France

To know that we know what we know, and that we do not know what we do not know, that is true knowledge.
Henry David Thoreau

Everyone hears only what he understands.
Goethe

If you think education is expensive – try ignorance.
Derek Bok

If a man empties his purse into his head, no one can take it from him.
Benjamin Franklin

Everybody is ignorant, only on different subjects.
Will Rogers

I am not ashamed to confess that I am ignorant of what I do not know.
Cicero

Obstinacy and heat in sticking to one’s opinions is the surest proof of stupidity. Is there anything so cock-sure, so immovable, so disdainful, so contemplative, so solemn and serious as an ass?
Michel de Montaigne

One of the greatest joys known to man is to take flight into ignorance in search of knowledge.
Robert Lynd

Any man can make mistakes, but only an idiot persists in his error.
Cicero

‘For example’ is not proof.
Jewish proverb

No man can reveal to you aught but that which already lies half asleep in the dawning of your knowledge.
Kahlil Gibran

Statistics are no substitute for judgment
Henry Clay

Almost all important questions are important precisely because they are not susceptible to quantitative answer.
Arthur Schlesinger, Jr.

All men by nature desire to know.
Aristotle

All the glory of the world would be buried in oblivion, unless God had provided mortals with the remedy of books.
Richard De Bury

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