Quote

What is all your studying worth, all your learning, all your knowledge, if it doesn't lead to wisdom? And what's wisdom but knowing what is right, and what is the right thing to do?

Iain Banks

Change background

T
T
T

Change font

TAGS & TOPICS

Iain Banks
Age: 59 †
Born: 1954
Born: February 16
Died: 2013
Died: June 9
Author
Novelist
Philosopher
Science Fiction Writer
Writer
Iain M. Banks
Iain Menzies Banks
Thing
Worth
Learning
Study
Wisdom
Knowing
Knowledge
Doesn
Studying
Right
Lead

More quotes by Iain Banks

Image
I'm an only child so am happy with my own company and I don't really get lonely.
Iain Banks
Image
I remember being shocked when I discovered some of my school pals didn't have books in their homes. I thought it was like not having oxygen, or hot water.
Iain Banks
Image
In theory, I work an eight-hour day and a five-day week which means I can socialise with my pals who mostly have normal jobs like teaching and computer programming.
Iain Banks
Image
Intellectual achievement. The exercise of skill. Human feeling.
Iain Banks
Image
I held my crotch, closed my eyes and repeated my secret catechism.
Iain Banks
Image
I just come up with the stories and write them as well as I can. There's not really a great deal of strokey-beard thinking going on.
Iain Banks
Image
Escape is a consumer goods like another
Iain Banks
Image
Science fiction has its own history, its own legacy of what's been done, what's been superseded, what's so much part of the furniture it's practically part of the fabric now, what's become no more than a joke... and so on. It's just plain foolish, as well as comically arrogant, to ignore all this, to fail to do the most basic research.
Iain Banks
Image
A guilty system recognizes no innocents.
Iain Banks
Image
You have to have something worth saying and then the ability to say it- writing's a double skill, really.
Iain Banks
Image
Mr Blawke always reminded me of a heron I'm not sure why. Something to do with a sense of rapacious stillness, perhaps, and also the aura of one who knows time is on his side.
Iain Banks
Image
Don't you have a religion? Dorolow asked Horza. Yes, he replied, not taking his eyes away from the screen on the wall above the end of the main mess-room table. My survival.
Iain Banks
Image
It was the day my grandmother exploded.
Iain Banks
Image
If this goes badly and I make a crater, I want it named after me!
Iain Banks
Image
You need to read more science fiction. Nobody who reads science fiction comes out with this crap about the end of history
Iain Banks
Image
Well, he sighed to no one in particular, and looked up into yet another alien sky. Here we are again.
Iain Banks
Image
Something in your voice tells me we approach the question of remuneration.
Iain Banks
Image
I think we need politicians we need people who want to serve.
Iain Banks
Image
Smell is a very animal thing, almost reptilian, where the more cerebral things like reading less so.
Iain Banks
Image
One of your American professors said that to study religion was merely to know the mind of man, but if one truly wanted to know the mind of God, you must study physics.
Iain Banks