Knowledge Misuse Quotes

The mind of the thoroughly well-informed man is a dreadful thing. It is like a bric-à-brac shop, all monsters and dust, with everything priced above its proper value.

Knowledge without education is but armed injustice.

You have decided that other clergy all know nothing and you alone know everything, and have sought to use your knowledge not to build but to destroy so that on these grounds we may believe that St. Gregory, whose name you have claimed for yourself, was prophesying when he said: "The mind of the prelate is often exalted by the abundance of his subjects".

I have been asked whether I would agree that the tragedy of the scientist is that he is able to bring about great advances in our knowledge, which mankind may then proceed to use for purposes of destruction. My answer is that this is not the tragedy of the scientist; it is the tragedy of mankind.

A Man of Knowledge like a rich Soil, feeds If not a world of Corn, a world of Weeds.

All the world knew that a maester forged his silver link when he learned the art of healing—but the world preferred to forget that men who knew how to heal also knew how to kill.

A youth's knowledge is like a cheap shotgun-likely to do as much damage to the owner as to the game.

Knowledge without mileage equals bullshit.

Knowledge is but an instrument, which the profligate and the flagitious may use as well as the brave and the just.

Some people drink from the fountain of knowledge, others just gargle.

Knowledge is like a knife. In the hands of a well-balanced adult it is an instrument for good of inestimable value; but in the hands of a child, an idiot, a criminal, a drunkard or an insane man, it may cause havoc, misery, suffering and crime. Science and religion have this in common, that their noble aims, their power for good, have often, with wrong men, deteriorated into a boomerang to the human race.

Knowledge becomes evil if the aim be not virtuous.

It's man's nature to abuse knowledge and power, be it in the realm of science, government, or Wall Street. Take God out of the picture, and you have real trouble.

Every other knowledge is harmful to him who does not have knowledge of goodness.

Please don't make the mistake of thinking that 'Oryx and Crake' is anti-science. Science is a way of knowing, and a tool. Like all ways of knowing and tools, it can be turned to bad uses. And it can be bought and sold, and it often is. But it is not in itself bad. Like electricity, it's neutral.

Western civilization, unfortunately, does not link knowledge and morality but rather, it connects knowledge and power and makes them equivalent.

Knowledge cannot defile, nor consequently the books, if the will and conscience be not defiled.

When knowledge is cut off from traditional values, it becomes disastrous.

The more learned and witty you bee, the more fit to act for Satan will you bee.

To rule by knowledge ravages the country.

What was the point of education, he thought, if people went out afterward and used it?

... the scientist would maintain that knowledge in of itself is wholly good, and that there should be and are methods of dealing with misuses of knowledge by the ruffian or the bully other than by suppressing the knowledge.

We are as liable to be corrupted by books, as by companions.

Learning is like mercury, one of the most powerful and excellent things in the world in skillful hands; in unskillful, the most mischievous.

The consequences of a plethora of half-digested theoretical knowledge are deplorable.