Pudd'nhead Wilson's New Calendar, Ch. XXV
Following the Equator (1897)
“Definition of a classic: a book everyone is assumed to have read and often thinks they have.”
Letter to an American friend (1893), quoted in John Rohl, Wilhelm II: The Kaiser's Personal Monarchy 1888-1900 (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2004), p. 1003
1890s
Part of his public message upon arrival on his second visit to America (19 May 1932).
General sources
“You don't have to burn books to destroy a culture. Just get people to stop reading them.”
As quoted in "Bradbury Still Believes in Heat of ‘Fahrenheit 451’" http://community.seattletimes.nwsource.com/archive/?date=19930312&slug=1689996, interview by Misha Berson, in ', credited to "Ray Bradbury, quoted by Misha Berson in Seattle Times", in "Quotable Quotes", The Reader's Digest, Vol. 144, No. 861, January 1994, p. 25 http://books.google.com/books?output=html&id=ZqqUAAAAIAAJ&q=%22people+to+stop+reading%22#search_anchor), or an indirect reference to the re-quoting in Reader's Digest (such as: The Times Book of Quotations (Philip Howard, ed.), 2000, Times Books and HarperCollins, p. 93
Variant: We're not teaching kids to read and write and think. … There's no reason to burn books if you don't read them.
As quoted in "At 80, Ray Bradbury Still Fighting the Future He Foresaw" http://www.raybradbury.com/articles_peoria.html, interview by Roger Moore, in The Peoria Journal Star (August 2000)
Context: The problem in our country isn't with books being banned, but with people no longer reading. Look at the magazines, the newspapers around us – it's all junk, all trash, tidbits of news. The average TV ad has 120 images a minute. Everything just falls off your mind. … You don't have to burn books to destroy a culture. Just get people to stop reading them.
“People who read only the classics are sure to remain up-to-date.”
Wenn man nur die Alten liest, ist man sicher, immer neu zu bleiben.
Source: Aphorisms (1880/1893), p. 24.
“The book of the Bible which most obviously resembles the Taoist classics is Ecclesiastes.”
But at the same time there is much in the teaching of the Gospels on simplicity, childlikeness, and humility, which responds to the deepest aspirations of the Chuang Tzu book and the Tao Teh Ching.
"A Note To The Reader".
The Way of Chuang-Tzŭ (1965)
“When I read it, I don't wince, which is all I ever ask for a book I write.”
On Tough Guys Don't Dance as quoted in The New York Times (8 June 1984)
“I could read the great books but the great books don't interest me.”
Source: The Last Night of the Earth Poems
