Ernest Andre Gellner Quotes

There are two things which cannot be attacked in front: ignorance and narrow-mindedness. They can only be shaken by the simple development of the contrary qualities. They will not bear discussion.

Ignorance is less remote from the truth than prejudice.

Knowledge humanizes mankind, and reason inclines to mildness; but prejudices eradicate every tender disposition.

With science and reason throughout history, what people believed turned out to be false. So I like to keep an open mind to all perspectives and learn and become more fully realised as a person. I just feel we're never going to know what the full picture is.

Very few beings really seek knowledge in this world. Mortal or immortal, few really ASK. On the contrary, they try to wring from the unknown the answers they have already shaped in their own minds.

Any person without invincible prejudice who had the same experience would come to the same broad conclusion, viz., that things hitherto held impossible do actually occur.

There was a time when someone would get on a plane and request to move their seat just because the person sitting next to them was of a different ethnicity or religion or nationality. But I don't think my generation wants that. That's how it used to be.

Believing in each culture's right to be understood by the other party without any form of falseness or distortion is paramount.

In the long run of history, the censor and the inquisitor have always lost. The only sure weapon against bad ideas is better ideas. The source of better ideas is wisdom. The surest path to wisdom is a liberal education.

We hear only those questions for which we are in a position to find answers

You will never succeed in getting at the truth if you know, ahead of time, what the truth ought to be

We ascend the hill-tops of philosophy, not to gaze up at the ever-visible heavens, but to embrace in one grand view the human world beneath us.

Education helps one acquires a higher grade of prejudices.

He who is master of all opinions can never be the bigot of any.

It is notable how little empathy is cultivated or valued in our society. I put this down to our traditional racism and obsessive sectarianism. Even so, one would think that we would be encouraged to project ourselves into the character of someone of a different race or class, if only to be able to control him. But no effort is made.

Doubt is the origin of wisdom.

No nation has reason to regard itself superior to others by virtue of its innate endowment.

Racism has a very quick expiration date when exposed to actual contact with people.

Beware of current truths.

You're entitled your own opinions, but you're not entitled to your own facts.

You have to go to other countries to realize Taipei is a place where there is diversity of thought.

My education has allowed me to be more open to ideas which I would not have been had I not been as educated.

Let not men think there is no truth, but in the sciences that they study, or the books that they read.

An unprejudiced mind is probably the rarest thing in the world; to nonprejudice I attach the greatest value.

Garrett," said Stendahl, "do you know why I've done this to you? Because you burned Mr. Poe's books without really reading them. You took other people's advice that they needed burning. Otherwise you'd have realized what I was going to do to you when we came down here a moment ago. Ignorance is fatal, Mr. Garrett.