Boyd K. Packer wrote:
I was acquainted with a Harvard professor of economics. He once told me that when he was a student in Germany someone asked him what he intended to do with the knowledge he was gaining. He said the question made him very angry. Why did he have to do anything with it? Was knowledge not worth acquiring for itself alone?
Somewhere in the economic difficulties we now suffer are the theories of the professor of economics who thought knowledge was and end in itself.
Years ago there was a student at Columbia University who was known as the “perennial student.” He had been left an inheritance which stipulated that it should continue as long as he was engaged in collegiate study. Thereafter the income was to go to charity.
This man remained a student until he died. It was said that he had been granted every degree offered by Columbia University and had taken practically every course. No field of knowledge was foreign to him. He was probably more widely read than the best of his professors. He was described as the “epitome of erudition.” But he could not possibly be described as educated. He fit the description of those spoken of in the scripture who are “ever learning, and never able to come to the knowledge of the truth” (2 Timothy 3:7). He was inherently selfish. What a pity! What a waste! ~ Boyd K. Packer, ‘Memorable Stories With a Message’ (Salt Lake City: Deseret Book, 2000) 22-23
There are complementary and tempering teachings in
the scriptures which bring a balanced knowledge of truth.
(From ““The Pattern of Our Parentage,” Ensign, November 1984. p. 66)
(Posts with a preamble asterisk * are for a more general audience, and not specific to teachings of the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints.)
