The US doesn't understand South America."

Let's get one thing straight. Puerto Rico was parda, negra, mulata, mestiza. Not a country of Spaniards at all. We outnumbered them, year after year.

the majority of the American people don't even know what the United States government and the businessmen do.

The average man is profoundly ignorant of countries that lie remote from his own.

The majority of people have no understanding of the things with which they daily meet, nor, when instructed, do they have any right knowledge of them, although to themselves they seem to have.

I am very worried that most Americans are close to total ignorance about the world. They are ignorant. That is an unhealthy condition in a country in which foreign policy has to be endorsed by the people if it is to be pursued. And it makes it much more difficult for any president to pursue an intelligent policy that does justice to the complexity of the world.

I can't think of anything that excites a greater sense of childlike wonder than to be in a country where you are ignorant of almost everything.

With all the stir made about education, the ignorance of our own country's history is something lamentable and appalling and depressing.

His ignorance was as remarkable as his knowledge. Of contemporary literature, philosophy and politics he appeared to know next to nothing... My surprise reached a climax, however, when I found incidentally that he was ignorant of the Copernican Theory and of the composition of the Solar System.

They are possibly the dumbest people on the planet... in thrall to conniving, thieving, smug pricks. We Americans suffer from an enforced ignorance. We don't know about anything that's happening outside our country. Our stupidity is embarrassing. National Geographic produced a survey which showed that 60 percent of 18-25 year olds don't know where Great Britain is on a map. And 92 percent of us don't own a passport.

Popular ignorance of foreign policy is incomparably greater than of domestic policy.

There is a cult of ignorance in the United States, and there has always been. The strain of anti-intellectualism has been a constant thread winding its way through our political and cultural life, nurtured by the false notion that democracy means that 'my ignorance is just as good as your knowledge.

There is a cult of ignorance in the United States, and there always has been. The strain of anti-intellectualism has been a constant thread winding its way through our political and cultural life, nurtured by the false notion that democracy means that 'my ignorance is just as good as your knowledge.

There is a cult of ignorance in the United States, and there always has been. The strain of anti-intellectualism has been a constant thread winding its way through our political and cultural life, nurtured by the false notion that democracy means that "my ignorance is just as good as your knowledge."