Ignorant Quote Mining

I have decided to expand my horizons of human literature.

From this day forward, I won't be only reading about the classics. No longer will I pass over the written word preferring the burned DVD. From now on I will be picking up some selected works and scanning through them like a panicked college student with an overdue book report.

The enlightened reader will notice that my limited vocabulary will begin to grow over the next few weeks as I memorize new words and add them to my (pause to search nearby dictionary)... lexicon.

And here's something that I quote-mined from a book today:

"It is a common sentence that Knowledge is power; but who hath duly considered or set forth the power of Ignorance?

Knowledge slowly builds up what Ignorance in an hour pulls down. Knowledge, through patient and frugal centuries, enlarges discovery and makes record of it; Ignorance, wanting its day's dinner, lights a fire with the record, and gives a flavour to its one roast with the burnt souls of many generations.

Knowledge, instructing the sense, refining and multiplying needs, transforms itself into skill and makes life various with a new six days' work; comes Ignorance drunk on the seventh, with a firkin of oil and a match and an easy 'Let there not be' - and the many-coloured creation is shrivelled up in blackness.

Of a truth, Knowledge is power, but it is a power reined by scruple, having a conscience of what must be and what may be; whereas Ignorance is a blind giant who, let him but wax unbound, would make it a sport to seize the pillars that hold up the long-wrought fabric of human good, and turn all the places of joy dark as a buried Babylon." - From George Elliot's "Daniel Deronda"

From what I've seen in the media lately, this passage resonates. This one time only, I will spare you the pained tedium of my elucidation. This one time I'll allow you to apply it how you see fit.