Bernard Beckett Quotes

I hate the idea of sheltering kids from challenging books. It's just another form of conservative fear that promotes ignorance more than anything else.

Ideas are only lethal if you suppress and don't discuss them. Ignorance is not bliss, it's stupid. Banning books shows you don't trust your kids to think and you don't trust yourself to be able to talk to them.

Garrett," said Stendahl, "do you know why I've done this to you? Because you burned Mr. Poe's books without really reading them. You took other people's advice that they needed burning. Otherwise you'd have realized what I was going to do to you when we came down here a moment ago. Ignorance is fatal, Mr. Garrett.

Even as a youngster, though, I could not bring myself to believe that if knowledge presented danger, the solution was ignorance.

Science exists, moreover, only as a journey toward truth. Stifle dissent and you end that journey.

Ignorance of what real learning is, and a consequent suspicion of it; materialism, and a consequent intellectual laxity, both of these have done destructive work in the colleges.

We've no use for intellectuals in this outfit. What we need is chimpanzees. Let me give you a word of advice: never say a word to us about being intelligent. We will think for you, my friend. Don't forget it.

The stupidity of people comes from having an answer for everything. The wisdom of the novel comes from having a question for everything.

A wise system of education will at last teach us how little man yet knows, how much he has still to learn.

The air of ideas is the only air worth breathing.

We have no right to express an opinion until we know all of the answers.

Whoever does not love knowledge, then there is no good in him.

In the long run of history, the censor and the inquisitor have always lost. The only sure weapon against bad ideas is better ideas. The source of better ideas is wisdom. The surest path to wisdom is a liberal education.

Ideas are dangerous, but the man to whom they are least dangerous is the man of ideas. He is acquainted with ideas, and moves among them like a lion-tamer. … the man to whom they are most dangerous is the man of no ideas. The man of no ideas will find the first idea fly to his head like wine to the head of a teetotaller

Faith is a poison that paralyzes the mind. In all the days of your life, seek knowledge!

The present age has witnessed an extraordinary increase of a thinking public, by the facilities afforded to the diffusion of reading; the former happy resignation to ignorance begins to make way for a state of half-enlightenment, and few persons are willing to remain in the condition in which their birth has placed then.

To be conscious that you are ignorant is a great step to knowledge.

Only by ignorance is science threatened.

Maybe I don't really want to know what's going on. Maybe I'd rather not know. Maybe I couldn't bear to know. The Fall was a fall from innocence to knowledge.

A man remains ignorant because he loves ignorance, and chooses ignorant thoughts; a man becomes wise because he loves wisdom and chooses wise thoughts.

It is dangerous to know, but it is more dangerous not to know.

Even as a youngster, though, I could not bring myself to believe that if knowledge presented danger, the solution was ignorance. To me, it always seemed that the solution had to be wisdom. You did not refuse to look at danger, rather you learned how to handle it safely.

To the intelligent man or woman, life appears infinitely mysterious. But the stupid have an answer for every question.

He who replies to words of doubt doth put the light of knowledge out.

A man who chooses not to read is just as ignorant as a man who cannot read.