Ignorance, when it is voluntary, is criminal; and he may be properly charged with evil who refused to learn how he might prevent it.
Interpretation
Voluntary ignorance is a serious moral failing, and one who chooses not to educate themselves bears responsibility for the consequences.
This quote by Samuel Johnson highlights the moral obligations of individuals to seek knowledge and understanding. It suggests that when people are willfully ignorant, they not only fail to protect themselves but may also cause harm to others. The choice to remain uninformed is likened to a crime, making it crucial for individuals to actively pursue knowledge to prevent ignorance from leading to suffering or injustice.
In practice
A teacher discussing the importance of continuous education in a classroom.
To be of no church is dangerous. Religion, of which the rewards are distant, and which is animated only by faith and hope, will glide by degrees out of the mind unless it be invigorated and reimpressed by external ordinances, by stated calls to worship, and the salutary influence of example.
He that reads and grows no wiser seldom suspects his own deficiency, but complains of hard words and obscure sentences, and asks why books are written which cannot be understood.
To let friendship die away by negligence and silence is certainly not wise. It is voluntarily to throw away one of the greatest comforts of the weary pilgrimage.
Fly-fishing may be a very pleasant amusement; but angling or float fishing I can only compare to a stick and a string, with a worm at one end and a fool at the other.
When any anxiety or gloom of the mind takes hold of you, make it a rule not to publish it by complaining; but exert yourselves to hide it, and by endeavoring to hide it you drive it away.
A fishing rod is a stick with a hook at one end and a fool at the other.
The highest exercise of imagination is not to devise what has no existence, but rather to perceive what really exists, though unseen by the outward eye-not creation, but insight.
Ambition! We must be careful what we mean by it. If it means the desire to get ahead of other people - which is what I think it does mean - then it is bad. If it means simply wanting to do a thing well, then it is good. It isn't wrong for an actor to want to act his part as well as it can possibly be acted, but the wish to have his name in bigger type than the other actors is a bad one.
None are so fallible as those who are sure they're right.
Embrace suffering, and you transform your relationship with what causes you to suffer, as well as your relationship with suffering itself.
The wise man makes an island of himself that no flood can overwhelm.
Man must cease attributing his problems to his environment, and learn again to exercise his will - his personal responsibility in the realm of faith and morals.
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