“He had dabbled in a thing which he had not understood. And had, furthermore, committed that greater sin of thinking that he did understand.”
Source: Way Station (1963), Ch. 13
Context: He had dabbled in a thing which he had not understood. And had, furthermore, committed that greater sin of thinking that he did understand. And the fact of the matter was that he had just barely understood enough to make the concept work, but had not understood enough to be aware of its consequences.
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Clifford D. Simak 137
American writer, journalist 1904–1988Related quotes

"To the Indianapolis Clergy." The Iconoclast (Indianapolis, IN) (1883)
Context: There is also this remarkable fact: Paul quotes none of the miracles of the New Testament. He says not one word about the multitude being fed miraculously, not one word about the resurrection of Lazarus, nor of the widow’s son. He had never heard of the lame, the halt, and the blind that had been cured; or if he had, he did not think these incidents of enough importance to be embalmed in an epistle.

“Later he had seen the things that he could never think of and later still he had seen much worse.”

Source: The Passion from Within (1981), p. 147
Source: The Bourgeois: Catholicism vs. Capitalism in Eighteenth-Century France (1927), p. 120

Serban Ghica, as quoted in John Sweeney, The Life and Evil Times of Nicolae Ceausescu (Hutchinson, 1991), p. 75
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"Flight", pp.125, Harper Row 1966
Native Son (1940)
Source: The Bourgeois: Catholicism vs. Capitalism in Eighteenth-Century France (1927), p. 93