Education Quote by Frederick Soddy

Soddy’s line has the clean, cold snap of someone who watched a century learn too much, too fast. “On our plane” is doing quiet but heavy work: he’s not talking about abstract metaphysics or some higher moral realm. He means the human operating system, the world where decisions get made under pressure, with partial information, ego, and institutional inertia. Knowledge and ignorance aren’t mere opposites here; they’re “immemorial adversaries,” locked in a permanent struggle that predates any single discovery and outlasts any single genius.

Coming from a scientist, the intent isn’t to flatter knowledge as a shiny virtue. It’s closer to a warning about the asymmetry of the fight. Knowledge is hard-won, incremental, expensive; ignorance is effortless, self-renewing, and often politically useful. The phrase also refuses the comforting idea that science simply “advances” and darkness recedes. Soddy, who helped pioneer radiochemistry and later worried about how scientific breakthroughs could be yoked to destructive economic and military systems, knew that information can multiply without wisdom keeping pace.

The subtext is institutional: ignorance isn’t just not knowing, it’s organized unknowing - denial, complacency, and the choice to stay incurious because curiosity is disruptive. By calling the conflict “immemorial,” Soddy frames the scientist’s job as less triumphalist and more defensive: vigilance, education, and public reasoning as continual countermeasures. On the human plane, progress isn’t a victory parade. It’s a contested border, patrolled forever.