Scientia Est Potentia

Timothy Francis-Wright twright at ziplink.net
Sun Nov 17 19:50:33 PST 2002


R <rhisiart at earthlink.net> wrote, quoting Wm. Safire:


> The Latin motto over Poindexter"s new Pentagon office reads
> "Scientia Est Potentia" - "knowledge is power." Exactly: the
> government's infinite knowledge about you is its power over
> you.

The Latin dictionary at my fingertips (Chambers-Murray) translates potentia as follows:

A. in gen[eral] a. force, power. b. strength, force, efficacy. B. in partic[ular]: political power, esp[ecially] unofficial or unconstitutional power.

Not that Poindexter would know anything about sense B.

--tim francis-wright



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