“It is better to know — even if the knowledge endured only for the moment that comes before destruction — than to gain eternal life at the price of a dull and swinish lack of comprehension of a universe that swirls unseen before us in all its wonder.”
The New Hugo Winners: Award-winning Science Fiction Stories Vol. 1 (1989)<!-- Afterword to "Speech Sounds" -->, p. 215
General sources
Context: We are meant to know, or we are amoebae.
Suppose that we are wise enough to learn and know — and yet not wise enough to control our learning and knowledge, so that we use it to destroy ourselves?
Even if that is so, knowledge remains better than ignorance. It is better to know — even if the knowledge endured only for the moment that comes before destruction — than to gain eternal life at the price of a dull and swinish lack of comprehension of a universe that swirls unseen before us in all its wonder. That was the choice of Achilles, and it is mine, too.
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Isaac Asimov 303
American writer and professor of biochemistry at Boston Uni… 1920–1992Related quotes
“I value all things only by the price they shall gain in eternity.”
As quoted in The Law of Rewards : Giving What You Can't Keep to Gain What You Can't Lose (2003 by Randy C. Alcorn, p. 18
General sources
Source: Dictionary of Burning Words of Brilliant Writers (1895), P. 584.
Source: Buddha, Vol. 2: The Four Encounters
"Is Life Worth Living?"
1890s, The Will to Believe and Other Essays in Popular Philosophy (1897)
On the renewal of the Christian church in Russia, p. 251
1990s, Against the Grain (1990)
Context: I am convinced that the moment is coming when, with its message of eternal, universal values, it will come to the aid of our society. For in these words: "Thou shalt not kill; Thou shalt love thy neighbor as thyself," lie those very moral principles that will enable us to survive even the most critical situations.