First And

“Most people have some appreciation of mathematics, just as most people can enjoy a pleasant tune; and there are probably more people really interested in mathematics than in music. Appearances suggest the contrary, but there are easy explanations. Music can be used to stimulate mass emotion, while mathematics cannot; and musical incapacity is recognized (no doubt rightly) as mildly discreditable, whereas most people are so frightened of the name of mathematics that they are ready, quite unaffectedly, to exaggerate their own mathematical stupidity”
― G.H. Hardy, A Mathematician's Apology

“I would prefer an intelligent hell to a stupid paradise.”
― Blaise Pascal

“Jasnah had once defined a fool as a person who ignored information because it disagreed with desired results.”
― Brandon Sanderson, Words of Radiance

“Avoidable human misery is more often caused not so much by stupidity as by ignorance, particularly our ignorance about ourselves.”
― Carl Sagan, The Demon-Haunted World: Science as a Candle in the Dark