Knowledge as Power Quotes

A popular government, without popular information, or the means of acquiring it is but a prologue to a farce or a tragedy; or perhaps both ... And a people who mean to be their own governors, must arm themselves with the power that knowledge gives.

The history of man is the history of crimes, and history can repeat. So information is a defence. Through this we can build, we must build, a defence against repetition.

There was a very famous leader in Atlanta who thought that education was appropriate, but on the whole, the view was, 'If you're going to keep people down, you have to keep them ignorant. And so, nothing personal, but we just don't want to recognize the attributes that man of learning would bring. Quite threatening, those would be.'

The role of the intellectual, so it is said, is to speak truth to power. Noam Chomsky has dismissed this pious tag on two grounds. For one thing, power knows the truth already; it is just busy trying to conceal it. For another, it is not those in power who need the truth, but those they oppress.

Knowledge is a form of power and most institutions exhibit an understandable reluctance to dissipate this power in the absence of compensating advantages

The Southern demagogue can no more leave the educational system alone than can his European equivalent. It is the nature of the demagogue. Reading and writing are the two enemies he fears most ... Wherever he lives he fears schools and colleges and teachers and students. He feels that they are engaged in a gigantic conspiracy against his rule.

Christianity taught us to see the eye of the lord looking down upon us. Such forms of knowledge project an image of reality, at the expense of reality itself. They talk figures and icons and signs, but fail to perceive forces and flows. They bind us to other realities, and especially the reality of power as it subjugates us. Their function is to tame, and the result is the fabrication of docile and obedient subjects.