Education is a process of gradually discovering your ignorance.
Education is a process of gradually discovering one's ignorance. (The original English sentence is Durant's famous saying. )
Descartes also said:
The more you learn, the more you will discover your ignorance.
I can't find the original English sentence, maybe because he is French, haha.
Socrates once said that why he is smarter than others is because:
"I know I am ignorant."
I think it can be translated into:
Without education, you won't find your ignorance.
I think this story can explain the meaning of this sentence.
In the history of western philosophy, there is a story of "knowledge circle theory".
Once, a student asked the ancient Greek philosopher Zhi Nuo, "Teacher, your knowledge is many times more than mine, and your answer to the question is correct, but why do you always doubt your answer?" Zhi Nuo conveniently drew two circles, one big and one small, on the table, pointing to them and saying, "The area of the big circle is my knowledge, and the area of the small circle is your knowledge. I have more knowledge than you. Outside these two circles, you and I don't know The circumference of a big circle is longer than that of a small circle.
Therefore, I have been exposed to more ignorance than you. That's why I often doubt myself. In this story, Zhi Nuo compares knowledge to a circle, vividly revealing the dialectical relationship between knowledge and ignorance.
This story shows that when a person has certain knowledge, the more questions he contacts and thinks, the more he feels that he doesn't understand many questions, and the more he feels that he lacks knowledge. On the contrary, a person who lacks knowledge and has low ability to find and think about problems feels more knowledgeable.
So I think maybe this sentence can also be said as:
The process of education is to make us realize our ignorance.
7 think of Xunzi's "Encourage Learning" and there is a sentence:
If you don't climb the mountain, you don't know the height of the sky; Don't face the deep stream, I don't know the thickness of the ground; I didn't know the greatness of learning until I heard the last words of my late king.
In fact, I think if you are translating an article from English into Chinese, it is wonderful to use this famous China saying to translate this famous English proverb!