American Ignorance Quotes

#1. whatever complicated emotions I felt for him, I didn't want to ruin the moment with my unfortunately stereotypical American ignorance of history and geography.

Jacqueline Carey

#2. No man ever went broke overestimating the ignorance of the American public.

P.T. Barnum

#3. You'll say things all wrong but they'll at once become American ways of saying things. You won't know shit but it'll right away become an American type of ignorance. Not belonging, that's an old American tradition, see?, that's the American way.

Salman Rushdie

#4. [For American consumer society], the country's reserves of ignorance constitute a natural resource as precious as the Mississippi River or the long-lost herds of buffalo.

Lewis H. Lapham

#5. It is not a conspiracy, don't call it a conspiracy. It is all out in the open and it stands on the ignorance, apathy and stupidity of the American people that is the foundation upon which the New World Order is built.

William Cooper

#6. (both circumvented the handicap of deafness by answering only those questions they believed had been asked & accepting only those answers they believed had been uttered - a stratagem embraced by many an American advocate)

David Mitchell

#7. You don't have to be Dave Halberstam to see that the American role in both conflicts [the Iraq war and the Vietnam conflict] is characterized by arrogance, ignorance and self-delusion at the highest levels of government.

Jonathan Yardley

#8. Where did I get the nerve to think I could handle American teenagers? Ignorance. That's where I got the nerve.

Frank McCourt

#9. While American men are fighting to rid the old world of autocracy let American women set to and rid the new world of this intolerable old burden of sex ignorance.

Crystal Eastman

#10. Yes I know my enemies. They're the teachers who taught me to fight me, compromise, conformity, assimilation, submission, ignorance, hypocrisy, brutality, the elite, all of which are American dreams.

Zack De La Rocha

#11. The American people have this to learn: that where justice is denied, where poverty is enforced, where ignorance prevails, and where any one class is made to feel that society is an organized conspiracy to oppress, rob, and degrade them, neither person nor property is safe.

Frederick Douglass

#12. Much of the impotence of American churches is tied to a profound ignorance and apathy about justification. Our people live in a fog of guilt. Or just as bad, they think being a better person is all God requires.

Kevin DeYoung

#13. If we are to guard against ignorance and remain free, it is the responsibility of every American to be informed,

Thomas Jefferson

#14. Traditional American intellectuals are, in a sense, increasingly reactionary, and quite often proudly (and perversely) ignorant of many of the truly significant intellectual accomplishments of our time.

John Brockman

#15. The four cornerstones of the American political psyche are 1) emotion substituted for thought, 2) fear, 3) ignorance and 4) propaganda

Joe Bageant

#16. The irony of American history is the tendency of good white Americanas to presume racial innocence. Ignorance of how we are shaped racially is the first sign of privilege.
In other words. It is a privilege to ignore the consequences of race in America.

Tim Wise

#17. The failure of the family court system in America is a national scandal. Sadly, the mainstream media, whether out of ignorance or fear, refuses to cover it. That media silence means that every day, these American human rights abuses continue to occur.

Garland Waller

#18. The American Standard translation orders men to triumph over sin, and you can call sin ignorance. The King James translation makes a promise in 'Thou shalt,' meaning that men will surely triumph over sin. But the Hebrew word, the word timshel - 'Thou mayest' - that gives a choice. It

John Steinbeck

#19. The English love for privacy is proverbial, and has not been exaggerated. A stranger who strikes up a conversation is looked upon with suspicion - unless he happens to be an American, when his ignorance of good manners is indulged.

Henry Steele Commager

#20. I have always regarded as a stroke of good fortune that I was not born or brought up in a small American town; they may be the backbone of the nation, but they are also the backbone of ignorance, bigotry, and boredom, all in vast quantities.

Gore Vidal

#21. It may not be in the constitution, but every American has a god-given right to provinciality and ignorance.

Dov Davidoff

#22. And the reason for this ignorance is that a knowledge of the role these people played - and play - in American life would reveal more about America to Americans than Americans wish to know. The

James Baldwin

#23. Ah, so that must have been her mystery: she had discovered a trail into the forest. Surely that was where she went during her absences. Returning with her eyes filled with gentleness & ignorance, eyes made whole. An ignorance so vast that inside it all the world's wisdom could be contained & lost.

Clarice Lispector

#24. Everything is possible in America, except the production of intelligence.

Mie Hansson