Skip to content
quotesby

About this quote

What does it mean?
The quote critiques the adage that knowledge is power by highlighting its potential use for harm and evasion of consequences.
In plain terms
Knowing things gives you power, but that power can be used to kill and escape punishment.
What can you take from it?
Knowledge amplifies ability, including the capacity for violence and secrecy.

Where it applies

  • ethical discussions
  • crime fiction analysis
  • philosophical debates

Putting it to work

  • critiquing proverbs
  • analyzing antagonist motivation
  • debating knowledge ethics

Questions to consider

  • Does knowledge inherently enable harm?
  • How do we define power responsibly?

Another view

The quote reduces the complex value of knowledge to a narrow, violent utility.

More from Lee Child

  1. Suppose you wanted to kill people. You would need to know ahead of time how to do it. That part is not too difficult. There are many ways. Some of them are bet…

    Permalink to quote #15
  2. Life is full of decisions and judgments and guesses, and it gets to the point where you're so accustomed to making them you keep right on making them even when…

    Permalink to quote #17
  3. People say that knowledge is power. The more knowledge, the more power. Suppose you knew the winning numbers for the lottery? All of them? Not guessed them, no…

    Permalink to quote #14

Related quotes

  1. Violence, less and less embarrassed by the limits imposed by centuries of lawfulness, is brazenly and victoriously striding across the whole world, unconcerned…

    Alexander SolzhenitsynAlexander Solzhenitsyn quote #30
  2. We shall be told: what can literature possibly do against the ruthless onslaught of open violence? But let us not forget that violence does not live alone and …

    Alexander SolzhenitsynAlexander Solzhenitsyn quote #34
  3. 'I can't have your subjects throwing my family over the balcony, that would never do.' 'Good,' said Snibril. 'I'll do it myself.'

    Terry PratchettTerry Pratchett quote #61