We can easily forgive a child who is afraid of the dark; the real tragedy of life is when men are afraid of the light.
There is but one coward on earth, and that is the coward that dare not know.
It is error only, and not truth, that shrinks from inquiry.
The extremists are afraid of books and pens, the power of education frightens them. they are afraid of women.
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.
My reading as a child was lazy and cowardly, and it is yet. I was afraid of encountering, in a book, something I didn't want to know.
They're afraid of change, and we must change. They're afraid of the young, and we are the young. They're afraid of music, and music is our life. They're afraid of books, and knowledge, and ideas. They're most afraid of our magic.
Avoiding the physical sciences due to the fear that they will lead to heresy is childish.
Do you understand now why books are hated and feared? Because they reveal the pores on the face of life. The comfortable people want only the faces of the full moon, wax, faces without pores, hairless, expressionless.
Sometimes we smile at a child thats afraid of the dark. I think more ridiculous is a man or woman afraid of the light.
Yes my lord, but questions are dangerous, for they have answers
People who don't read books a lot are threatened by books.
'cause humans, above all, fear intelligence. how humans, scared out of their minds, gather whatever intelligence they can put their hands on and put it all in a central penitentiary named facts.
Fear of knowing is very deeply a fear of doing.
There is a lurking fear that some things are not “meant" to be known, that some inquiries are too dangerous for human beings to make.
If we didn't fear the truths we didn't hear, we'd lose the need to fear the ones we did.
There are no wrong books. What's wrong is the fear of them.
Those who want to burn books are either afraid of the ideas contained within the covers or they haven't the courage to stand up for the views which they themselves profess to hold.
Stupidity would not be absolute stupidity did it not fear intelligence.
A society that fears knowledge is a society that fears itself.
The sin which is unpardonable is knowingly and wilfully to reject truth, to fear knowledge lest that knowledge pander not to thy prejudices.
Even as a youngster, though, I could not bring myself to believe that if knowledge presented danger, the solution was ignorance.
People are all ignorant, they fear new things, they fear knowledge somehow, I don't know why. Everything that I ever learned was always so great. I never thought so at the time, it was just that little bit more in your mind an expansion of consciousness or awareness.
