We get more dangerous as we accumulate knowledge, and that's both

The composer and philosopher Lou Harrison, a man whose music sought to unite East and West, once spoke with both sorrow and wisdom: “We get more dangerous as we accumulate knowledge, and that's both a sadness and something to control, try to learn to live with, make terms with.” These words rise like a lament and a warning—an acknowledgment of humanity’s dual nature, the bright flame of understanding and the shadow it casts. Harrison saw that knowledge, for all its light, carries within it the seed of peril. As we grow wiser in the ways of the world, we also grow more powerful—and power, if untempered by humility, can turn creation into destruction.

The origin of this quote lies in the heart of Harrison’s own life as an artist and thinker. Living through the 20th century, an age of both extraordinary beauty and terrible innovation, he witnessed mankind split between harmony and chaos. It was the era of great symphonies and great wars, of flight into the heavens and fire upon the earth. As an artist, Harrison sought to build bridges between cultures; yet he saw how the same instruments that carried music across oceans could also carry bombs. Thus, when he spoke of the danger that comes with accumulated knowledge, he spoke from the vantage of one who had watched humanity grow in intellect but not always in compassion. His words were not a condemnation of learning, but a plea for balance—to control, to make terms with the power that knowledge brings.

For this is the paradox of our species: every discovery brings both gift and curse. Fire warmed the first humans and cooked their food—but also forged weapons that could kill. The atom yielded the energy to light cities—and the power to erase them. In every age, knowledge without wisdom has been a knife with two edges, cutting the world open to both healing and harm. Harrison’s sadness springs from this truth: that enlightenment alone does not sanctify us. To know is not the same as to understand; to master a force is not the same as to master ourselves.

History offers a thousand witnesses to this sorrow. Consider Robert Oppenheimer, the father of the atomic bomb. In the desert of New Mexico, when he beheld the first flash of the weapon he helped create, he recalled the words of the Bhagavad Gita: “Now I am become Death, the destroyer of worlds.” Here was knowledge incarnate—brilliant, precise, magnificent—and terrible. Oppenheimer had reached the height of human understanding, yet at that height he found despair. The weapon that ended a war also ushered in an age of fear. His genius, like the flame of Prometheus, illuminated the world and scorched it at once. Harrison’s insight is woven into that moment: the danger of knowledge lies not in what we know, but in what we fail to restrain.

And yet, Harrison’s words do not end in despair—they end in responsibility. “Try to learn to live with, make terms with,” he says. This is the task of the wise: not to reject knowledge, but to discipline it. The power of understanding must be yoked to the strength of conscience. To live with knowledge is to walk beside danger, to recognize that progress must always be guided by mercy, that discovery must serve harmony, not dominance. The sadness, then, is not that we learn, but that we so often forget to love as we learn. Knowledge must be balanced by compassion, or it devours the very world it seeks to improve.

O listener, take this truth into your heart: knowledge is sacred fire. It can warm a village or burn a city. It can heal the sick or destroy the innocent. The mind that acquires knowledge without shaping the soul that wields it is like a sword without a hand to guide it—sharp, powerful, and blind. Do not seek learning for power alone; seek it for wisdom, for service, for peace. Let your understanding be tempered by kindness, your ambition by humility. For the wise do not fear knowledge, but they handle it as one handles lightning—with reverence, awareness, and care.

Thus, the legacy of Lou Harrison is not one of warning alone, but of harmony. He teaches that in every note of progress, there must be a counterpoint of conscience. The more we know, the greater our responsibility becomes. We must make terms with knowledge, not by rejecting it, but by infusing it with the rhythm of morality and the melody of compassion. In this way, humanity may yet transform its danger into art, its power into beauty, and its knowledge into wisdom.

So remember, child of tomorrow: do not fear what you learn, but fear forgetting your heart as you learn it. For it is only when the light of the mind shines through the warmth of the spirit that knowledge ceases to be dangerous—and becomes divine.