Wisdom and Ignorance

A classic is something that everybody wants to have read and nobody has read.

Mark Twain, in Art and Literature and Wisdom and Ignorance

I have never let my schooling interfere with my education.

Mark Twain, in Wisdom and Ignorance

I was gratified to be able to answer promptly. I said, "I don't know."

Mark Twain, in Wisdom and Ignorance

Human history becomes more and more a race between education and catastrophe.

H. G. Wells, in Wisdom and Ignorance

Furious activity is no substitute for understanding.

H. H. Williams, in Wisdom and Ignorance and Work and Recreation

Man is a rational animal who always loses his temper when he is called upon to act in accordance with the dictates of reason.

Oscar Wilde, in Science and Religion and Wisdom and Ignorance

I was asked by the customs if I had anything to declare. I said: Yes, I'd like to declare -- I'm a genius!

Oscar Wilde, in Wisdom and Ignorance

I am not young enough to know everything.

Oscar Wilde, in Wisdom and Ignorance

Education is an admirable thing, but nothing that is worth knowing can be taught.

Oscar Wilde, in Wisdom and Ignorance

Half a man's life is devoted to what he calls improvements, yet the original had some quality which is lost in the process.

E. B. White, in Wisdom and Ignorance

All generalizations are false, including this one.

Blaise Pascal, in Wisdom and Ignorance

The illiterate of the 21st century will not be those who cannot read and write, but those who cannot learn, unlearn, and relearn.

Alvin Toffler, in Wisdom and Ignorance

The human mind treats a new idea the way the body treats a strange protein -- it rejects it.

Peter Medawar, in Wisdom and Ignorance

You have to be an intellectual to believe such nonsense. No ordinary man could be such a fool.

George Orwell, in Wisdom and Ignorance

If what Proust says is true, that happiness is the absence of fever, then I will never know happiness. For I am possessed by a fever for knowledge, experience, and creation.

Anaïs Nin, in Happiness and Misery and Wisdom and Ignorance

We don't see things as they are. We see things as we are.

Anaïs Nin, in Wisdom and Ignorance

Any man whose errors take ten years to correct is quite a man.

Robert J. Oppenheimer, (on Albert Einstein), in Wisdom and Ignorance

Wisdom sets bounds even to knowledge.

Friedrich Nietzsche, in Wisdom and Ignorance

You can lead a horticulture but you can't make her think.

Dorothy Parker, (when asked to use the word "horticulture" in a sentence), in Wisdom and Ignorance

The cure for boredom is curiosity. There is no cure for curiosity.

Ellen Parr, in Wisdom and Ignorance