Ignorance -------------------------------------------------------------------- Sections (TOC) : ---------------------------------- * 1 28 Words; 148 Characters * 2 92 Words; 532 Characters * 3 28 Words; 211 Characters * 4 13 Words; 85 Characters * 5 194 Words; 1,058 Characters * 6 38 Words; 243 Characters * 7 75 Words; 467 Characters * 8 131 Words; 775 Characters * 9 14 Words; 85 Characters * 10 41 Words; 240 Characters * 11 94 Words; 562 Characters * 12 95 Words; 585 Characters * 13 23 Words; 148 Characters * 14 10 Words; 73 Characters * 15 15 Words; 110 Characters * 16 61 Words; 351 Characters * 17 86 Words; 463 Characters Sections (Content) : ---------------------------------- * 1 They spent the first three years of school getting you to pretend stuff and then the rest of it marking you down if you did the same thing. * 2 For myself, the only Devil I know is that black Devil ignorance, fostered by knavery and tyranny; a Devil personified by the credulous many, and kept up in the past by the learned but treacherous few, who preferred to rule the masses by their fears, rather than to guide them through their love. This devil has, indeed, not been a roaring lion, but a cowardly and treacherous boa constrictor; it has enveloped in its massive folds glorious truths, and in the fierceness of its brute power has crushed them in its writhings. * 3 HIM (Jean-Francois Rameau): You gave lessons in mathematics. ME (Denis Diderot): Without understanding a word of it. Isn't that where you want to go? HIM (Jean-Francois Rameau): Exactly. * 4 ...the abuses of knowledge are never so enormous as the abuses of ignorance. * 5 That the education of young people at the present day conceals from them the part which sexuality will play in their lives is not the only reproach which we are obliged to make against it. Its other sin is that it does not prepare them for the aggressiveness of which they are destined to become the objects. In sending the young out into life with such a false psychological orientation, education is behaving as though one were to equip people starting on a Polar expedition with summer clothing and maps of the Italian Lakes. In this it becomes evident that a certain misuse is being made of ethical demands. The strictness of those demands would not do so much harm if education were to say: 'This is how men ought to be, in order to be happy and to make others happy; but you have to reckon on their not being like that.' Instead of this the young are made to believe that everyone else fulfills those ethical demands -- that is, that everyone else is virtuous. It is on this that the demand is based that the young, too, shall become virtuous. * 6 ...the number of years of schooling does not mean that the real educational level of the labor force will be higher, considering the generally acknowledged lower quality of education that seems to have affected all spheres of society. * 7 Poor human nature, what horrible crimes have been committed in thy name! Every fool, from king to policeman, from the flatheaded parson to the visionless dabbler in science, presumes to speak authoritatively of human nature. The greater the mental charlatan, the more definite his insistence on the wickedness and weaknesses of human nature. Yet, how can any one speak of it today, with every soul in a prison, with every heart fettered, wounded, and maimed? * 8 ...Learning has been as great a Loser by being shut up in Colleges and Cells, and secluded from the World and good Company. By that Means, every Thing of what we call Belles Lettres became totally barbarous, being cultivated by Men without any Taste of Life or Manners, and without that Liberty and Facility of Thought and Expression, which can only be acquir'd by Conversation. Even Philosophy went to Wrack by this moaping recluse Method of Study, and became as chimerical in her Conclusions as she was unintelligible in her Stile and Manner of Delivery. And indeed, what cou'd be expected from Men who never consulted Experience in any of their Reasonings, or who never search'd for that Experience, where alone it is to be found, in common Life and Conversation? * 9 Legends die hard in the popular mind, while facts tend to languish in books. * 10 Ignorance has been our king. Since the death of empire, he sits unchallenged on the throne of Man. His dynasty is age-old. His right to rule is now considered legitimate. Past sages have affirmed it. They did nothing to unseat him. * 11 ...education for the masses will do little good, and probably a lot of harm, if it simply boils down to more physics, more chemistry, more biology, etc., to the detriment of literature and history. Its probable effect on the average human being would be to narrow the range of his thoughts and make him more than ever contemptuous of such knowledge as he did not possess: and his political reactions would probably be somewhat less intelligent than those of an illiterate peasant who retained a few historical memories and a fairly sound esthetic sense. * 12 It was said that the children are to be taught to read well, and to understand what they read. In many schools, the children of the poor and laboring classes are never taught to understand what they read; the time therefore which is occupied in the mockery of the instruction is lost. In other schools, the children, through the ignorance of their instructors, are taught to believe without reasoning, and thus never to think or to reason correctly. These truly lamentable practices cannot fail to indispose, the young mind for plain, simple, and rational instruction. * 13 ...the human race would long since have ceased to be, had its preservation depended only on the reasonings of the individuals composing it. * 14 ...fear and ignorance are not conducive to the highest morality. * 15 I can accept only what reason can comprehend, the "inconceivable" will eventually become the "false". * 16 They who are alarmed lest virtue should so far demean herself as to be extremely good, have not yet wholly embraced her, but described only a slight arc of a few seconds about her; and from so small and ill-defined a curvature, you can calculate no center whatever; but their mean is no better than meanness, nor their medium than mediocrity. * 17 ...you are born serfs, you die serfs, and the only oil you have is that of the Last Anointing. Slaves in body and in soul, your tyrants do not even allow you to read, in your own tongue, the book on which they say your religion is founded. Awake, Romans, at the call of liberty, truth, and nature. The cry rings over Europe. You must hear it. Break the chains that bind your generous hands -- the chains forged by tyranny in the den of imposture. Events : ---------------------------------- Ignorance -- Added : April 13, 2020 About This Textfile : ---------------------------------- Text file generated from : http://RevoltSource.com/