Michel de Montaigne Ignorance Quotations

Ignorance is the softest pillow on which a man can rest his head.

What we are told of the inhabitants of Brazil, that they never die but of old age, is attributed to the tranquility and serenity of their climate; I rather attribute it to the tranquility and serenity of their souls, which are free from all passion, thought, or any absorbing and unpleasant labors. Those people spend their lives in an admirable simplicity and ignorance, without letters, without law, without king, without any manner of religion.

What am I to choose? "Choose what you please, as long as you choose." There you have a foolish answer, which seems to be the outcome, however, of all Dogmatism, which will not allow us to be ignorant of that which we are ignorant.

We took advantage of [the Indians'] ignorance and inexperience to incline them the more easily toward treachery, lewdness, avarice, and every sort of inhumanity and cruelty, after the example and pattern of our ways.

Miracles arise from our ignorance of nature, not from nature itself.

Whoever will imagine a perpetual confession of ignorance, a judgment without leaning or inclination, on any occasion whatever, hasa conception of Pyrrhonism.

Whoever will be cured of ignorance, let him confess it.

Perhaps it is not without reason that we attribute facility in belief and conviction to simplicity and ignorance; for it seems to me I once learned that belief was sort of an impression made on our mind, and that the softer it is the less resistant t.

Wonder is the foundation of all philosophy, inquiry the progress, ignorance the end.

The plague of man is the opinion of knowledge. That is why ignorance is so recommended by our religion as a quality suitable to belief and obedience.

A learned man is not learned in all things; but a sufficient man is sufficient throughout, even to ignorance itself.

He that had never seen a river, imagined the first he met with to be the sea.

Tis well for old age that it is always accompanied with want of perception, ignorance, and a facility of being deceived. For should we see how we are used and would not acquiesce, what would become of us?