"The most merciful thing in the world, I think, is the inability of the human mind to correlate all its contents. We live on a placid island of ignorance in the midst of black seas of infinity, and it was not meant that we should voyage far. The sciences, each straining in its own direction, have hitherto harmed us little; but some day the piecing together of dissociated knowledge will open up such terrifying vistas of reality, and of our frightful position therein, that we shall either go mad from the revelation or flee from the light into the peace and safety of a new dark age." (Howard P Lovecraft, "The Call of Cthulhu", 1926)
"If you are young, then I say: Learn something about statistics as soon as you can. Don’t dismiss it through ignorance or because it calls for thought. [...] If you are older and already crowned with the laurels of success, see to it that those under your wing who look to you for advice are encouraged to look into this subject. In this way you will show that your arteries are not yet hardened, and you will be able to reap the benefits without doing overmuch work yourself. Whoever you are, if your work calls for the interpretation of data, you may be able to do without statistics, but you won’t do as well." (Michael J Moroney, "Facts from Figures", 1927)
"[...] the valuable attributes of research men are conscious ignorance and active curiosity." (Willis R Whitney, "The Stimulation of Research in Pure Science Which Has Resulted from the Needs of Engineers and of Industry" Science Vol. 65 (1862), 1927)
"An addition to knowledge is won at the expense of an addition to ignorance. It is hard to empty the well of Truth with a leaky bucket." (Sir Arthur S Eddington, "The Nature of the Physical World", 1928)
"The fundamental gospel of statistics is to push back the domain of ignorance, prejudice, rule-of-thumb, arbitrary or premature decisions, tradition, and dogmatism and to increase the domain in which decisions are made and principles are formulated on the basis of analyzed quantitative facts." (Robert W Burgess, "The Whole Duty of the Statistical Forecaster", Journal of the American Statistical Association, Vol. 32, No. 200, 1937)
"In scientific subjects, the natural remedy for dogmatism has been found in research. By temperament and training, the research worker is the antithesis of the pundit. What he is actively and constantly aware of is his ignorance, not his knowledge; the insufficiency of his concepts, of the terms and phrases in which he tries to excogitate his problems: not their final and exhaustive sufficiency. He is, therefore, usually only a good teacher for the few who wish to use their mind as a workshop, rather than to store it as a warehouse." (Sir Ronald A Fisher, "Eugenics, Academic and Practical Eugenics" Review Vol. 27, 1935)
"In the great struggle between ignorance, distrust and brutality on one side, knowledge, understanding and peace on the other the scientist must stand fearlessly on the side of the latter, strengthening link between man and man and preaching that the only effective weapon of self-defense is good-will to others." (Albert Szent-Györgyi, [Nobel lecture] 1937)
"It happens at times that a person believes that he has a world-view, but that there is yet one particular phenomenon that is of such a nature that it baffles the understanding, and that he explains differently and attempts to ignore in order not to harbor the thought that this phenomenon might overthrow the whole view, or that his reflection does not possess enough courage and resolution to penetrate the phenomenon with his world-view." (Søren Kierkegaard, 1938)
"The ignorant suppose that infinite number of drawings require an infinite amount of time; in reality it is quite enough that time to be infinitely subdivisible, as is the case in the famous parable of the Tortoise and the Hare. This infinitude harmonizes in an admirable manner with the sinuous numbers of Chance and of the Celestial Archetype of the Lottery, adored by the Platonists." (Jorge L Borges, The Babylon Lottery, 1941)
"[...] we know, and what we really know, practical assent and simulated ignorance [...] allows us to live with ideas which, if we truly put them to the test, ought to upset our whole life." (Albert Camus, "The Myth of Sisyphus", 1942)
"And how small is the sum of our actual knowledge. With regards to all the more important things, to the questions which concern us more nearly, it amounts to little beyond a consciousness of our own ignorance." (Kenneth Walker, "Meaning and Purpose", 1944)
"And nobody can get far without at least an acquaintance with the mathematics of probability, not to the extent of making its calculations and filling examination papers with typical equations, but enough to know when they can be trusted, and when they are cooked. For when their imaginary numbers correspond to exact quantities of hard coins unalterably stamped with heads and tails, they are safe within certain limits; for here we have solid certainty [...] but when the calculation is one of no constant and several very capricious variables, guesswork, personal bias, and pecuniary interests, come in so strong that those who began by ignorantly imagining that statistics cannot lie end by imagining, equally ignorantly, that they never do anything else." (George B Shaw, "The Vice of Gambling and the Virtue of Insurance", 1944)
"There are many things whose existence we allow, but whose character we are still in ignorance of.… Why should we be surprised, then, that comets, so rare a sight in the universe, are not embraced under definite laws, or that their return is at long intervals? [...] The day will yet come when the progress of research through long ages will reveal to sight the mysteries of nature that are now concealed.… The day will yet come when posterity will be amazed that we remained ignorant of things that will to them seem so plain." (C Doris Hellman, "The Comet of 1577: Its Place in the History of Astronomy", 1944)
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