This proverb resembles “What you don't know cannot hurt you.” It figures in a passage from “On a Distant Prospect of Eton College,” by the eighteenth-century English poet Thomas Gray: “Where ignorance is bliss, / ‘Tis folly to be wise.’”
Examples are provided to illustrate real-world usage of words in context. Any opinions expressed do not reflect the views of Dictionary.com.
And for those of us who watch compulsively and wouldn’t know a dossier from a dog pound, ignorance is bliss.
From The Wall Street Journal • Oct. 16, 2025
It’s terrible to say, but part of me did think that ignorance is bliss.
From Los Angeles Times • Nov. 10, 2022
Maybe it’s an ignorance is bliss situation from never having had a full-size food processor until recently, but the mini version’s inability to shred or slice never caused me any distress.
From Washington Post • Apr. 29, 2022
Are there moments when you feel like ignorance is bliss?
From Salon • Jun. 13, 2018
They flourished, because "where ignorance is bliss 'tis folly to be wise" and no wave of unrest, few of the ignobilities and none of the nobilities of a more strenuous life had passed over them.
From Rome by Malleson, Hope
Definitions and idiom definitions from Dictionary.com Unabridged, based on the Random House Unabridged Dictionary, © Random House, Inc. 2023
Idioms from The American Heritage® Idioms Dictionary copyright © 2002, 2001, 1995 by Houghton Mifflin Harcourt Publishing Company. Published by Houghton Mifflin Harcourt Publishing Company.
