A Quote by Diogenes Laertius

Ignorance plays the chief part among men, and the multitude of words.

Diogenes Laertius

Quote Topics

Among Chief Ignorance Men Multitude Part Plays Words

Quote Author

Diogenes Laertius
Greek - Philosopher

He who hangs on the errors of the ignorant multitude, must not be counted among great men.

Marcus Tullius Cicero

We know that words cannot move mountains, but they can move the multitude; and men are more ready to fight and die for a word than for anything else. Words shape thought, stir feeling, and beget action; they kill and revive, corrupt and cure. The "men-of-words"- priests, prophets, intellectuals- have played a more decisive role in history than military leaders, statesmen, and businessmen.

Eric Hoffer

An ignorance of Marx is as frequent among Marxists as an ignorance of Christ is among Catholics.

Jose Bergamin

When the bubble of ignorance bursts the self realizes its oneness with the indivisible Self. Words that proceed from the Source of Truth have real meaning. But when men speakthese words as their own, the words become meaningless.

Meher Baba

The chief difference between words and deeds is that words are always intended for men for their approbation, but deeds can be done only for God.

Leo Tolstoy

One principal reason why men are so often useless is that they neglect their own profession or calling, and divide and shift their attention among a multitude of objects and pursuits.

Nathanael Emmons

The intellectuals' chief cause of anguish are one another's works. Jacques Barzun, 1959 all ignorance toboggans into know and trudges up to ignorance again.

e. e. cummings

I believe that fallen creatures perish, perish for ever, for only good can live, and good has not been theirs; but how durst men forge our Saviour's words "eternal death " into so horrible a meaning? And even if he did use other words, and seem to countenance such a meaning for them (and what witness have we that He did, except that of men whose ignorance or prejudice might well have interpreted these words wrongly as they did so many others?

James Anthony Froude

A multitude of words doth rather obscure than illustrate, they being a burden to the memory, and the first apt to be forgotten, before we come to the last. So that he that uses many words for the explaining of any subject, doth, like the cuttle-fish, hide himself, for the most part, in his own ink.

John Ray

If the multitude is possessed of the balance of real estate, the multitude will have the balance of power, and in that case the multitude will take care of the liberty, virtue, and interest of the multitude in all acts of government.

John Adams

And I will add this point of merely personal experience of humanity: when men have a real explanation they explain it, eagerly and copiously and in common speech, as Huxley freely gave it when he thought he had it. When they have no explanation to offer, they give short dignified replies, disdainful of the ignorance of the multitude.

Gilbert K. Chesterton

There was a time when corporations played a minor part in our business affairs, but now they play the chief part, and most men are the servants of corporations.

Woodrow Wilson

The poet existed among the cave men; he will exist among men of the atomic age, for he is an inherent part of man. Even religions have been born from the need for poetry, which is a spiritual need, and it is through the grace of poetry that the divine spark lives forever in the human flint.

Saint-John Perse

It is astonishing that so simple a truth should ever have had an adversary; and it is one among a multitude of proofs, how apt a spirit of ill-informed jealousy, or of too great abstraction and refinement is to lead men astray from the plainest paths of reason and conviction.

Alexander Hamilton

In proportion to the love existing among men, so will be the community of property and power. Among true and real friends, all is common; and, were ignorance and envy and superstition banished from the world, all mankind would be friends. The only perfect and genuine republic is that which comprehends every living being. Those distinctions which have been artificially set up, of nations, societies, families, and religions, are only general names, expressing the abhorrence and contempt with which men blindly consider their fellowmen.