“Great books are great teachers; they are showing us every day what ordinary people are capable of. These books come out of ignorant, inquiring humanity. They are usually the first announcements for success in learning. Most of them were written for, and addressed to, ordinary people.”

“The great are ordinary people who act in a great way.”

“If many great books seem unreadable and unintelligible … it may be because we have not for a long time learned to read by reading them. Great books teach people not only how to read them, but how to read all other books.”

“Behind every political deal in this country, the first casualties are always the ordinary people, who are barely treated as human.”

“It had been startling and disappointing to me to find out that story books had been written by people, that books were not natural wonders, coming up of themselves like grass.”

“I have great respect for the unconditional teachers called books. Because from a book, you can either learn, or you can’t.”

“There is, I believe, a great deal to be learned from faith traditions – from the ordinary people who practice them today; from their sacred texts and writings and artefacts; and from their histories.”

“It's the quality of the ordinary, the straight, the square, that accounts for the great stability and success of our nation. It's a quality to be proud of. But it's a quality that many people seem to have neglected.”

“The books that help you most are those which make you think the most. The hardest way of learning is that of easy reading; but a great book that comes from a great thinker is a ship of thought, deep freighted with truth and beauty.”

“Every book is a great action and every great action is a book!”