ignorance

Religion needs science to keep it away from superstition and keep it close to reality, to protect it from creationism, which at the end of the day is a kind of paganism - it's turning God into a nature god. And science needs religion in order to have a conscience, to know that, just because something is possible, it may not be a good thing to do.

'"Ignorance is a fatal disease"

Yet the criterion of truth is that it works even if nobody is prepared to acknowledge it.

Give me the storm and tempest of thought and action, rather than the dead calm of ignorance and faith!

To realize that our knowledge is ignorance, This is a noble insight. To regard our ignorance as knowledge, This is mental sickness. Only when we are sick of the sickness Shall we cease to be sick. The Sage is not sick, being sick of sickness; This is the secret of health. -ch. 71, Tao Teh Ching, trans. John C. H. Wu, Shambhala, Boston & London, c.1990

To surrender to ignorance and call it God has always been premature, and it remains premature today.

When people do not ignore what they should ignore, but ignore what they should not ignore, this is known as ignorance.

I am at the same time both teacher and student mostly teaching myself or at least learning how to learn which may be the most important lesson of all in which case I may be my own best teacher because if I pay close enough attention to myself then I can see my own pitfalls as well as my strengths as long as I ALSO notice the times when my ego is involved and I then transcend my own ignorance and barriers to learning.

If we'd been born where they were born, and taught what they were taught, we would believe what they believe.

One of the great things about being ignorant is that I often think my ideas are original. It’s a wonderful feeling. That’s why I try to avoid any knowledge that would spoil the sensation. Sometimes it isn’t easy. People keep hurling knowledge at me, and I can’t always duck.