In the book, Captain Beatty, the fireman states,

"So! A book is a loaded gun in the house next door. Burn it. Take the shot from the weapon."

This shows the fear that the authorities of Fahrenheit's society show towards those who choose to read, since they know that reading a book will bring people knowledge, something that might cause the people to think independently and ignore the power of the mentioned authorities. This is evidenced by the old woman who quoted a book and preferred to commit suicide over yielding to the authority of the book-burning fireman.

Clarisse, an outlier in Fahrenheit’s simple-minded society, states

“but do you know, we never ask questions, or at least most don't; they just run the answers at you...”

The quote means that while information is given to students, the ability to "acquire" true knowledge, knowledge based on analysis and interpretation,  is never granted to the people.  The people are taught the answer to the question "what," but they are never taught the "how" or "why," the questions needed for an individual to process andrefine knowledge into important information that's worthy of being considered power.

While burning the house of a criminal, Beatty states

"None of those books agree with each other... The people in the books never lived..."

This brings us back to the first quote. Like the first one, this quote also demonstrates the fear of Fahrenheit's society towards reading. This time, the authority figure is trying to convince a person that a book has no power to give to people, and therefore no knowledge, since the information obtained is inconsistent. However, this leads to a new evidence of knowledge's power, interpretation. The reason why books can give knowledge to others is because of how different characters interpret them and use the information from the interpretations. . Later on, both Montag's and Beatty's interpretations of books leads to a climax at the end of the second chapter, where Beatty's ability to instill fear into Montag shows itself.