"If knowledge can create problems, it is not through ignorance that we can solve them"
About this Quote
Asimov’s line is a scalpel aimed at a very American fantasy: that if expertise gets us into trouble, “common sense” can magic us back out. He flips the usual anti-intellectual sneer into a logical trap. Yes, knowledge can create problems - nuclear weapons, industrial pollution, algorithmic manipulation - but the villain isn’t knowing. It’s what humans do with what they know, and what they refuse to know next.
The sentence works because it concedes the prosecution’s best argument before delivering the verdict. The first clause grants that scientific progress has consequences; the second clause refuses the comforting escape hatch of ignorance. That rhetorical structure matters: it frames knowledge as the only tool capable of diagnosing its own side effects. In subtext, Asimov is warning that nostalgia for simpler times is just a political program to stop asking hard questions.
Context sharpens the point. Asimov lived through the mid-century collision of science and state power: the Manhattan Project’s shadow, Cold War brinkmanship, a space race sold as destiny, and public debates over evolution and education. A scientist and popularizer, he watched technical complexity grow while public trust in expertise frayed. The quote reads like a preemptive rebuttal to the backlash: you don’t defuse a bomb by smashing the chemistry textbook.
It’s also a quiet ethical demand. If knowledge can harm, the answer isn’t less thinking; it’s more responsibility, better institutions, and deeper literacy - a public capable of interrogating science rather than either worshiping it or resenting it.
The sentence works because it concedes the prosecution’s best argument before delivering the verdict. The first clause grants that scientific progress has consequences; the second clause refuses the comforting escape hatch of ignorance. That rhetorical structure matters: it frames knowledge as the only tool capable of diagnosing its own side effects. In subtext, Asimov is warning that nostalgia for simpler times is just a political program to stop asking hard questions.
Context sharpens the point. Asimov lived through the mid-century collision of science and state power: the Manhattan Project’s shadow, Cold War brinkmanship, a space race sold as destiny, and public debates over evolution and education. A scientist and popularizer, he watched technical complexity grow while public trust in expertise frayed. The quote reads like a preemptive rebuttal to the backlash: you don’t defuse a bomb by smashing the chemistry textbook.
It’s also a quiet ethical demand. If knowledge can harm, the answer isn’t less thinking; it’s more responsibility, better institutions, and deeper literacy - a public capable of interrogating science rather than either worshiping it or resenting it.
Quote Details
| Topic | Knowledge |
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