
"I hate quotations. Tell
me what you know."
-Ralph Waldo-Emerson-
Have a favorite quote to share? E-mail it to Ed.
"Civilization is a method of living and an
attitude of equal respect for all people."
-Jane Addams-
"I don't want to achieve immortality through
my work. I want to achieve it through not dying."
-Woody Allen-
"It's not that I'm afraid to die, I just
don't want to be there when it happens."
-Woody Allen-
"The sad truth is
that most evil is done by people who never make up their minds to be either good
or evil."
-Hannah Arendt-
"I take the Bible
far too seriously to take it literally."
-Karl Barth-
"Where is human
nature so weak as in the bookstore?"
-Henry Ward Beecher-
"Don't own so much clutter that you will be relieved to see your house catch fire."
-Wendell Berry-
"You can best serve civilization by being against what usually passes for it."
-Wendell Berry-
"Be joyful because it is humanly possible."
-Wendell Berry-
"We have lived our lives by the assumption that what was good for us would be good for the world. We have been wrong.
We must change our lives so that it will be possible to live by the contrary assumption, that what is good for the world will be good for us.
And that requires that we make the effort to know the world and learn what is good for it."
-Wendell Berry-
"A corporation, essentially, is a pile of money to which a number of persons have sold their moral allegiance."
-Wendell Berry-
"You don't have to burn books to destroy a culture. Just get people to stop reading them."
-Ray Bradbury-
"There is more than one way to burn a book. And the world is full of people running about with lit matches."
-Ray Bradbury-
"Libraries raised me. I don't believe in colleges and universities. I believe in libraries, because most students don't have any money.
When I graduated from high school, it was during the Depression and we had no money.
I couldn't go to college, so I went to the library three days a week for 10 years."
-Ray Bradbury-
"I still love books. Nothing a computer can do can compare to a book. You can't really put a book on the Internet. ...
All the computer can give you is a manuscript. People don't want to read manuscripts. They want to read books. Books smell good.
They look good. You can press it to your bosom. You can carry it in your pocket."
-Ray Bradbury-
"Prejudices, it
is well known, are most difficult to eradicate from the heart whose soil have
never
been loosened or fertilized by education; they grow there, firm as weeds among
rocks."
-Charlotte Brontë-
"A room without
books is like a body without soul."
-Cicero-
"Nothing in life
is to be feared. It is only to be understood."
-Marie Curie-
"To be a
book-collector is to combine the worst characteristics of a dope fiend with
those of a miser."
-Robertson Davies-
"There are three
kinds of lies: lies, damned lies, and statistics."
-Benjamin Disraeli-
"Before God we
are all equally wise—and
equally foolish."
-Albert Einstein-
"Great spirits have always
encountered opposition from mediocre minds. The mediocre mind is incapable of
understanding
the man who refuses to bow blindly to conventional prejudices and chooses
instead to express his opinions courageously and honestly."
-Albert Einstein-
"Science without religion is lame,
religion without science is blind."
-Albert Einstein-
"The important thing is not stop
questioning."
-Albert Einstein-
"Blessed is the man who, having
nothing to say, abstains from giving us worthy evidence of that fact."
-George Eliot-
"To be great is
to be misunderstood."
-Ralph Waldo Emerson-
"Insist on
yourself; never imitate. . . Every great man is unique."
-Ralph Waldo Emerson-
"All intelligent
faith in God has behind it a background of humble agnosticism."
-Harry Emerson Fosdick-
"You cannot shake
hands with a clenched fist."
-Indira Gandhi-
"An eye for an
eye makes the whole world blind."
-Mahatma Gandhi-
"All things must
pass
All things must pass away
All things must pass
None of life's strings can last."
-George Harrison-
"Woe be to him that reads but one book."
-George Herbert-
"Question with
boldness even the existence of a god;
because, if there be one, he must more approve the homage of reason, than that
of blindfolded fear."
-Thomas Jefferson-
"Knowledge is of
two kinds. We know a subject ourselves, or we know we can find information on
it."
-Samuel Johnson-
"What
is written without effort is in general read without pleasure."
-Samuel Johnson-
"People do not like to think. If one
thinks, one must reach conclusions. Conclusions are not always pleasant."
-Hellen Keller-
"There are those
who look at things the way they are, and ask why? I dream of things that never
were and ask why not?"
-Robert F. Kennedy-
"It may be
true that the law cannot make a man love me, but it can stop him form lynching
me, and I think that's pretty important."
-Martin Luther King, Jr.-
"Nothing in all the world is more dangerous
than sincere ignorance and conscientious stupidity."
-Martin Luther King, Jr.-
"We must learn to
live together as brothers or perish together as fools."
-Martin Luther King, Jr.-
"If you don't
have the time to read, you don't have the time or tools to write."
-Stephen King-
"As usual, there
is a great woman behind every idiot."
-John Lennon-
"Life is what
happens to you while you're busy making other plans."
-John Lennon-
"We are all
Christ and we are all Hitler. We want Christ to win."
-John Lennon-
"I must say a word about fear. It is life's only true opponent. Only fear can defeat life. It is a clever, treacherous adversary, how well I know.
It has no decency, respects no law or convention, shows no mercy. It goes for your weakest spot, which it finds with unnerving ease. It begins in your mind,
always ... so you must fight hard to express it. You must fight hard to shine the light of words upon it. Because if you don't, if your fear becomes a wordless darkness
that you avoid, perhaps even manage to forget, you open yourself to further attacks of fear because you never truly fought the opponent who defeated you."
-Yann Martel- (The Life of Pi)
"Outside of a
dog, a book is man's best friend. Inside of a dog it's too dark to read."
-Groucho Marx-
"Never doubt that
a small group of thoughtful, committed citizens can change the world. Indeed, it
is the only thing that ever has."
-Margaret Mead-
"Education, I am
convinced, must be nothing more than this: The journey toward the limits of
Reason, if any there be."
-Richard Mitchell-
"There is only
one remedy for ignorance and thoughtlessness, and that is literacy. Millions and
millions of American children would today stand in no need of sex education, or
consumer education, or intercultural education, or any of these fake educations,
if they had in the first place an education."
-Richard Mitchell-
"Always read
stuff that will make you look good if you die in the middle of it."
-P.J. O'Rourke-
"Political
language—and with
variations this is true of all political parties, from Conservatives to
Anarchists—
is designed to make lies sound truthful and murder respectable, and to give an
appearance of solidity to pure wind."
-George Orwell-
"The great enemy of clear language is
insincerity. When there is a gap between one's real and one's declared aims,
one turns as it were instinctively to long words and exhausted idioms, like a
cuttlefish spurting out ink."
-George Orwell-
"Textbooks, it
seems to me, are enemies of education, instruments for promoting dogmatism and
trivial learning.
They may save the teacher some trouble, but the trouble they inflict on the
minds of students is a blight and a curse."
-Neil Postman-
"One must never,
for whatever reason, turn his back on life."
-Eleanor Roosevelt-
"You gain strength, courage, and confidence by every
experience in which you really stop to look fear in the face.
You must do the thing which you think you cannot do."
-Eleanor Roosevelt-
"Every increased
possession loads us with new weariness."
-John Ruskin-
"I would never
die for my beliefs because I might be wrong."
-Bertrand Russell-
"Patriotism is
the willingness to kill and be killed for trivial reasons."
-Bertrand Russell-
"Education is
when you read the fine print. Experience is what you get if you don't."
-Pete Seeger-
"This above all:
to thine own self be true, And it must follow, as the night the day,
Thou canst not then be false to any man."
-William Shakespeare-
"Just because I
don't care doesn't mean I don't understand."
-Homer Simpson-
"Peace is not an
absence of war, it is a virtue, a state of mind, a disposition of benevolence,
confidence, justice."
-Baruch Spinoza-
"Feminism is the
radical notion that women are people."
-Gloria Steinem-
"Beware of all
enterprises that require new clothes."
-Henry David Thoreau-
"It is never too
late to give up your prejudices."
-Henry David Thoreau-
"Our life is
frittered away by detail. Simplify, simplify."
-Henry David Thoreau-
"When in
company, put not your hands to any part of the body, not usually discovered."
-George Washington-
"If only we'd
stop trying to be happy we'd have a pretty good time."
-Edith Wharton-
Home/About the Book/Excerpt/Awards and Honors/Praise/About the Author/Author Q&A/Appearances/Contact/Links