“Our ignorance can be divided into problems and mysteries. When we face a problem, we may not know its solution, but we have insight, increasing knowledge, and an inkling of what we are looking for. When we face a mystery, however, we can only stare in wonder and bewilderment, not knowing what an explanation would even look like.”

Noam Chomsky

Noam Chomsky - “Our ignorance can be divided into...” 1

Similar quotes

“The problem of evil has baffled humankind since Eden; perhaps because it can only be approached through facing the mystery of good, and we do not like to acknowledge that good is a mystery.”

D.M. Dooling
Read more

“It does not matter that we cannot fathom this mystery. The only real problem comes when we think that we have.”

Madeleine L'Engle
Read more

“The acquisition of knowledge always involves the revelation of ignorance - almost is the revelation of ignorance. Our knowledge of the world instructs us first of all that the world is greater than our knowledge of it. To those who rejoice in the abundance and intricacy in Creation, this is a source of joy, as it is to those who rejoice in freedom...To those would-be solvers of "the human problem," who hope for knowledge equal to (capable of controlling) the world, it is a source of unremitting defeat and bewilderment. The evidence is overwhelming that knowledge does not solve "the human problem." Indeed, the evidence overwhelmingly suggests - with Genesis - that knowledge is the problem. Or perhaps we should say instead that all our problems tend to gather under two questions about knowledge: Having the ability and desire to know, how and what should we learn? And, having learned, how and for what should we use what we know? (pg. 183, People, Land, and Community)”

Wendell Berry
Read more

“When we gaze at a star in the Milky Way which is 50,000 light-years away from our sun, we are looking back 50,000 years in time.""The idea is much too big for my little head.""The only way we can look out into space, then, is to look back in time. We can never know what the universe is like now. We only know what it was like then. When we look up at a star that is thousands of light-years away, we are really traveling thousands of years back in the history of space.”

Jostein Gaarder
Read more

“When we face impossible odds, let us not look at the size of our problem; let us look at the size of our God.”

Dillon Burroughs
Read more