Knowledge is not power. At least, most knowledge isn't power. Much of what we call "knowledge" is mere factual ingestion and regurgitation. It's like knowing the answers to a trivia game—useless in most other contexts. What's left is what could be called "applied knowledge", which is a form of wisdom and is truly valuable, though this value is not evenly distributed across landscape of knowledge.
A problem is that many of our cultural institutions (from grade school to gameshows) with their built-in practices (quizzes, tests, and the like) often reinforce the ingestion and regurgitation of trivia over applied knowledge. Schools often do a pretty good job of teaching us static facts: names, dates, events. And to a lesser degree it teaches us means, methods, and ideas. Really great teachers will take us further down the branching and winding paths of knowledge towards the principles that underlie the most useful of those means, methods, and ideas. But those teachers can only lead us so far before our own curiosity and persistence is required to finish the journey.
For many of us (myself included), school trained us to respond to questions and unknowns with statements, as if we have the answers, because having the answers was what we were graded on. Having answers was correct. What it really did was train us to subconsciously place a lot more importance on "knowing" things than being curious. We did not learn to be comfortable not knowing, and leveraging that discomfort to encourage seeking knowledge, when needed or wanted. Instead, we learned only that we could avoid some degree of discomfort by spitting out answers or at least statements that sound like answers, or by properly executing a specific method (think long division, carrying your 1s, or writing in MLA format).1
Does this really equip us for real life? For most of us, success in the world is not at all like success in school, which is evaluated through a series of quizzes, tests, and assignments to evaluate if you've ingested certain knowledge.
When asked a question, it usually doesn't matter if you know the answer. What matters is whether you are willing to find the answer...if you need to.
When faced with an non-urgent obstacle, it doesn't matter if you know how to do something. What matters is if you are willing it figure it out...if you need to.
Truly worthwhile knowledge is less specific but infinitely more useful and meaningful.
"As to methods there may be a million and then some, but principles are few. The man who grasps principles can successfully select his own methods. The man who tries methods, ignoring principles, is sure to have trouble." —Harrington Emerson
When knowledge is power, it's primarily a tactical one.
That is, knowing a fact—a bit of information—provides momentary advantage only insofar as others do not know or recall it in a timely manner, within a context that would make that knowledge useful. By way of example—in my past life as a commercial building consultant I learned a lot of facts about low-slope roof systems and exterior walls and so on. I could rattle of the R-values of insulation materials, and I could identify how a roofing membrane was attached. But that didn't make me a good consultant. A good consultant could use those bits of knowledge to win minor skirmishes during a conference call between a buyer and seller of a building. But the best of the best could see the bigger picture, to know what does and doesn't matter, and could write a report or make a call or provide counsel that would truly improve their client's condition. One of my last jobs in that role was to perform an infrared survey of a building to find wet insulation for a contrator. When all was said and done, the survey wasn't even important; what mattered is the huge set of problems that contractor was creating for themselves by trying to cover over an insufficient substrate. They could have created years and millions of dollars in problems for themselves and their client. I found that out just by asking questions of the contractor while cutting samples out of a roof and taking pictures with my thermal camera.
If most knowledge is at best tactical power, then strategic power comes not from mere knowledge but from wisdom. And wisdom is less about knowing and more about being willing to go through the discomfort of finding out...if you need to.
The next few times you're asked something, consider taking a moment afterward to reflect. Did you know the answer? If so, was the knowledge merely tactical, or did you synthesize something strategic? (It's okay if you didn't—not every moment calls for that.) And if you didn't know the answer, how did you feel? How did you want to respond—or did you? Did you want to fill the silence anyway? Why, or why not?