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About this quote

What does it mean?
The masses might ignore or destroy valuable knowledge.
In plain terms
Uneducated crowds could reject learning.
What can you take from it?
Knowledge needs protection from ignorance.

Where it applies

  • cultural decline
  • political instability
  • education advocacy

Putting it to work

  • protecting institutions
  • promoting literacy

Questions to consider

  • Who controls knowledge?
  • Why reject learning?

Another view

Crowds can value knowledge in different ways.

More from Edmund Burke

  1. Kings will be tyrants from policy, when subjects are rebels from principle.

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  2. Because half-a-dozen grasshoppers under a fern make the field ring with their importunate chink, whilst thousands of great cattle, reposed beneath the shadow o…

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  3. Vice itself lost half its evil by losing all its grossness.

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