“ 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
Author | George Eliot |
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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.”
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