Education Quote by Charles Lederer

Lederer’s line has the brash, caffeinated certainty of a screenwriter who knows that “importance” is a story device as much as a belief. “Knowledge is more important than life” isn’t meant as a literal suicide note; it’s a provocation, a dare to rank the invisible (ideas, curiosity, discovery) above the most basic human asset (survival). The extremity is the point. By making life sound almost incidental, he flatters the listener’s self-image as someone who isn’t merely alive but awake.

The second sentence tightens the screw: “We’ve only one excuse for existing.” Not purpose, not destiny - excuse. That word carries a sly defensiveness, like humanity is on trial and the only credible alibi is the mind at work. Lederer frames thinking as moral justification, not hobby. “To think, to find out, to learn” reads like a rhythmic escalation: cognition to investigation to accumulation. It’s a staircase that turns curiosity into duty.

Context matters: Lederer wrote for an industry built on mass entertainment, where knowledge can be treated as trivia and thought as slowdown. The subtext is almost combative: against complacency, against passive consumption, against the idea that living well is enough. It’s also a wink at the Hollywood machinery of spectacle. A screenwriter insisting that thinking is the only “excuse” is claiming seriousness from inside a system that often rewards distraction. The line works because it’s both manifesto and self-mockery - noble in aim, slightly outrageous in delivery, engineered to stick in the ear like good dialogue.