... "No, that's not about us. How about this: 'man, as
opposed to animals, is a creature with an undefinable
need for knowledge'? I read that somewhere."

"So have I," said Valentine. "But the whole problem
with that is that the average man -- the one you have
in mind when you talk about 'us' and 'not us' -- very
easily manages to overcome this need for knowledge.
I don't believe that need even exists. There is a need
to understand, and you don't need knowledge for that.
The hypothesis of God, for instance, gives an incomparably
absolute opportunity to understand everything and know
absolutely nothing. Give man an extremely simplified
system of the world and explain every phenomenon away
on the basis of that system. An approach like that doesn't
require any knowledge. Just a few memorized formulas
pins so-called intuition and so-called common sense." ...

Roadside Picnic, Arkady and Boris Strugatsky