Of a truth, Knowledge is power, but it is a power reined by scruple, having a conscience of what must be and what may be
 George Eliot, Daniel Deronda (1876). copy citation

add
Author George Eliot
Source Daniel Deronda
Topic truth power
Date 1876
Language English
Reference
Note
Weblink http://www.gutenberg.org/cache/epub/7469/pg7469-images.html

Context

“Knowledge, instructing the sense, refining and multiplying needs, transforms itself into skill and makes life various with a new six days' work; comes Ignorance drunk on the seventh, with a firkin of oil and a match and an easy "Let there not be," and the many-colored creation is shriveled up in blackness. Of a truth, Knowledge is power, but it is a power reined by scruple, having a conscience of what must be and what may be; whereas Ignorance is a blind giant who, let him but wax unbound, would make it a sport to seize the pillars that hold up the long-wrought fabric of human good, and turn all the places of joy dark as a buried Babylon.” source