Education Quote by Isaac Asimov

Asimov sets a trap for the anti-intellectual reflex: what if knowing more is exactly what kills us? He names the nightmare in plain daylight, then refuses the comforting exit of romantic ignorance. The sentence is engineered like a thought experiment, but it’s also a moral dare. He concedes the strongest argument against knowledge - that our tools may outpace our self-control - and still insists knowledge is the better bet. That insistence isn’t naive optimism; it’s a hard-edged wager about what ignorance actually buys you: not safety, just blindness.

The subtext is aimed at a culture that treats expertise as arrogance and complexity as elitism, especially in the long Cold War shadow of nuclear physics. Asimov, a scientist who also spent his life translating science into popular language, knew the public’s split feeling: awe at discovery, resentment at its consequences. He doesn’t deny that science can be weaponized. He shifts the blame from knowledge itself to governance, ethics, and restraint - the part we chronically underinvest in because it’s harder than inventing.

Rhetorically, the quote works because it performs intellectual honesty before it makes its claim. The “Suppose” invites you to inhabit the fear, not dismiss it. Then the pivot - “Even if that is so” - turns anxiety into accountability. Asimov’s implicit demand is civic: the answer to dangerous knowledge isn’t less knowing, but better collective wisdom about how power gets used. Ignorance can’t disarm a bomb; it can only stop you from seeing who’s holding the detonator.