"A man's ignorance sometimes is not only..." - Quote by Henry David Thoreau
A man's ignorance sometimes is not only useful, but beautiful-while his knowledge, so called, is oftentimes worse than useless, besides being ugly.
More by Henry David Thoreau
“There are theoretical reformers at all times, and all the world over, living on anticipation.”
“One generation abandons the enterprises of another like stranded vessels.”
“Unto a life which I call natural I would gladly follow even a will-o'-the-wisp through bogs and sloughs unimaginable, but no moonnor firefly has shown me the causeway to it.”
More on Ignorance
“The more I know, the more I know that I don't know.”
“The ultimate ignorance is the rejection of something you know nothing about, yet refuse to investigate.”
“We see many instances of cities going down like sinking ships to their destruction. There have been such wrecks in the past and there surely will be others in the future, caused by the wickedness of captains and crews alike. For these are guilty men, whose sin is supreme ignorance of what matters most.”
More on Knowledge
“Instead of feeling a poverty when we encounter a great man, let us treat the new comer like a travelling geologist, who passes through our estate, and shows us good slate, or limestone, or anthracite, in our brush pasture.”
“You will never get to the irreducible definition of anything because you will never be able to explain why you want to explain, and so on. The system will gobble itself up.”
“There are plenty of maxims in the world; all that remains is to apply them.”