Quotes about books
page 32

“An independent nation cannot function without its own national language. That English should be replaced by our own language as a patriotic necessity. But so far as University education is concerned at any rate, it appears prudent to delay the change-over until our linguistic consolidation has proceeded further and our own languages have become more adequately equipped with the machinery of modern learning,- encyclopedias, dictionaries, reference books, treatises, text books, and a widely intelligible vocabulary of technical terms of modern science … the most elaborate code of ethical conduct that anyone could draw up cannot go much beyond the simple exhortation of The Upanishad’s Satyam vada, Dharmam cara [speak the truth, act nobly]. These should be the watch-words of our public and private life.”

Jayachamarajendra Wadiyar (1919–1974) Indian writer

In his convocation address at the Sri Venkateshwara University, at Tirupathi, quoted in "Jayachamaraja Wodeyar – A Princely scholar".

Life, Truth, Education, Intelligence

“It was an earnest, extreme, and irreverent book, a book that, in its mockery of authority, its relentless logic, its relentless hewing to the line of Reason, letting the sacred cows fall where they might, followed the old familiar script: CAMPUS REBEL FLAYS FACULTY. But the script was all balled up, for the author was more reactionary than any of the dignitaries in their black robes, and his book damned Yale as a hotbed of atheism and collectivism.”

Dwight Macdonald (1906–1982) journalist

Review of God and Man at Yale by William F. Buckley, Jr., quoted in Grace Elizabeth Hale, A Nation of Outsiders:How the White Middle Class Fell in Love With Rebellion in Postwar America. Oxford University Press, 2011.

“The essential complement to the path-breaking book Competitive Strategy, Michael E. Porter’s Competitive Advantage explores the underpinnings of competitive advantage in the individual firm.   Competitive Advantage introduces a whole new way of understanding what a firm does. Porter’s groundbreaking concept of the value chain disaggregates a company into “activities,” or the discrete functions or processes that represent the elemental building blocks of competitive advantage.”

Michael E. Porter (1947) American engineer and economist

Competitive Advantage, 1985

Way, Understanding

“Religion. Yes, that's behind all my books. What I am interested in is the relationship between the blundering human being and God. I belong to no church, but I have a religious faith; it's an attempt to express that, among other things, that I try to do. Whether he confesses to being religious or not, everyone has a religious faith of a kind. I myself am a blundering human being with a belief in God who made us and we got out of hand, a kind of Frankenstein monster. Everyone can make mistakes, including God. I believe God does intervene; I think there is a Divine Power, a Creator, who has an influence on human beings if they are willing to be open to him.”

Patrick White (1912–1990) English-born Australian writer

In The Making (1970)

God, Faith, Religion, Thinking

“It was one of those hot days and it got to be about a hundred degrees, and old Mike just got fed up and threw his books in the corner, and said, 'See ya later, Doc, I'm going to war.' Next thing we heard, he was in Italy with the 3rd Division, where he later was awarded the Medal of Honor and received a battlefield promotion.”

George S. Patton IV (1923–2004) U.S. Army general

On Michael J. Daly, who attended the United States Military Academy alongside Patton for one year. p. 27
The Fighting Pattons (1997) by Brian M. Sobel

War

“It took us two years to write, produce and arange the new album [90 Millas]. Aside from that, I wrote the two children's books based on Noelle, my bulldog, and I was fortunate enought that they ended up on the New York Times bestseller list. By now, we've got seven restaurants and two hotels, which we're very hands-on with, and we're building a third one in Vero Beach, Florida, And I took a vacation for once, because ever since Emilio and I got married in'78, every trip we've take has been for work. So last year, we went to Egypt, Panama, the Bahamas and Greece. It was fantastic!”

Gloria Estefan (1957) Cuban-American singer-songwriter, actress and divorciada

Latina Magazine (September, 2007)
2007, 2008

Children, Time

“If a prophecy is to be called infallible, I fairly demand that it should state beforehand legibly, clearly, and distinctly that which no man could previously have known, and that the same should thereafter take place at the time appointed, but that it should not take place because it has been predicted. If, however, such a prophecy can only be verified through allegorical interpretations of words and interpretation of words and things; if it be only composed of dark and dubious words, and the expressions it contains are commonplace, vague, and uncertain; if the matter was thought probable, or was foreseen by human cunning; if it occurs because it was predicted; if the words used refer to some other matter and are only applied to the prophecy by a quibble; if it is only written down after the event has occurred; if a prophetic book or passage is given out to be older than it is; or lastly, if the thing predicted does not take place at all, then the prophecy is either doubtful or false.”

Hermann Samuel Reimarus (1694–1768) German philosopher

Source: Fragments from Reimarus: Consisting of Brief Critical Remarks on the Object of Jesus and His Disciples as Seen in the New Testament, pp. 76–77

Time, Falseness

“Interview, Mark Thwaite, 12th August 2005. 'Ready Steady Book for literature”

Dennis O'Driscoll (1954–2012) Irish poet, critic

Other Quotes

Literature

“I find, Andrew Keen's, his whole pitch, I think he was just pure and simple looking for an angle, to create some controversy and sell a book, I don't think there's any substance whatever to his rants.”

Tim O'Reilly (1954) Irish computer programmer

The Truth According to the Wikipedia- IJsbrand van Veelen

Thinking

“Late in the winter of my seventeenth year, my mother decided I was depressed, presumably because I rarely left the house, spent quite a lot of time in bed, read the same book over and over, ate infrequently, and devoted quite a bit of my abundant free time to thinking about death.”

John Green book The Fault in Our Stars

Hazel Grace Lancaster, p. 3 (opening words)
The Fault in Our Stars (2012)

Death, Thinking, Winter, Time

“Art is like sex: when you're doing it, nothing else matters. Away from his desk the novelist can care deeply about the social, political, moral aspects of what he is writing but when he sits down to write, all those concerns fall away and nothing matters except the putting down of one carefully chosen word after another carefully chosen word, until a sentence is finished, then a paragraph, then a page, then a chapter, then a book. When I'm working I don't care about anything, not even myself. All my concentration is directed towards the making of the thing on the page. The rest is just stuff — even though it is the stuff of life.”

John Banville (1945) Irish writer

John Banville, The Art of Fiction No. 200 (2009)

Life, Art, Sex

“You will not find much about what the Prime Minister does in the text-books. What he does is partly made up of convention and custom, but the nature of the office depends a great deal on the person who holds it. … Make it [the Cabinet] as small as possible. Democracy means government by discussion, but it is only effective if you can stop people talking. Some of my early Cabinets were very small, but I arrived at the conclusion that 16 is the right number.”

Clement Attlee (1883–1967) Former Prime Minister of the United Kingdom

Address to the Oxford University Law Society (14 June 1957), quoted in The Times (15 June 1957), p. 4.
Later life

People, Democracy, Nature, Dependency

“She has a fascination with Mayan prophecies, and she's writing a book that's sort of her remembrance of her past incarnation. Whatever she applies herself to, she makes it this beautiful, glorious world around her. All of us kids have always been artistic because of her influence.”

Brandon Boyd (1976) American rock singer, writer and visual artist

on his mom, Dolly Wiseman. Spin (October 2001)

World, Beauty, Past

“Books are sepulchres of thought.”

Henry Wadsworth Longfellow (1807–1882) American poet

Wind over the Chimney, reported in Bartlett's Familiar Quotations, 10th ed. (1919).

“My aim was to create armaments to protect the borders of my motherland. It is not my fault that the Kalashnikov became very well-known in the world; that it was used in many troubled places. I think the policies of these countries are to blame, not the designers. Man is born to protect his family, his children, his wife. But I want you to know that apart from armaments, I have written three books in which I try to educate our youth to show respect for their families, for old people, for history.”

Mikhail Kalashnikov (1919–2013) Soviet and Russian small arms designer

For Patriotism and Profit (2001)

Children, People, Youth, World

“As a creative crystallizing of the movement beyond the state of Patriarchal Paralysis, this book is an act of Dis-possession; and hence, in a sense beyond the limitations of the label anti-male, it is absolutely Anti-androcrat, A-mazingly Anti-male, Furiously and Finally Female.”

Mary Daly (1928–2010) American radical feminist philosopher and theologian

Source: Gyn/Ecology: The Metaethics of Radical Feminism (1978–1990), p. 29.

Sense

“I'm signed to release the third book in the series. When they invited me to do the Noelle book I had started on an autobiography, sort of, because I still get a lot of questions about that. I done so much music in my life, and writing is a beautiful outlet to continue to grow.”

Gloria Estefan (1957) Cuban-American singer-songwriter, actress and divorciada

Reuters (November 17, 2006)
2007, 2008

Life, Beauty, Music, Question

“It is impossible to publish your book, and it will not be published in the next 200 years.”

Vasily Grossman (1905–1964) Soviet writer and journalist who originally trained as an engineer

1960s

“In the last few years there has been a harvest of books and lectures about the "Mysterious Universe." The inconceivable magnitudes with which astronomy deals produce a sense of awe which lends itself to a poetic and philosophical treatment. "When I consider thy heavens, the work of thy hands, the moon and the starts, whuch thou hast ordained: what is man that thou art mindful of him? The literary skill with which this branch of science has been exploited compels one's admiration, but alos, a little, one's sense of the ridiculous. For other facts than those of astronomy, oother disciplines than of mathematics, can produce the same lively feelings of awe and reverence: the extraordinary finenness of their adjustments to the world outside: the amazing faculties of the human mind, of which we know neither whence it comes not whither it goes. In some fortunate people this reverence is produced by the natural bauty of a landscape, by the majesty of an ancient building, by the heroism of a rescue party, by poetry, or by music. God is doubtless a Mathematician, but he is also a Physiologist, an Engineer, a Mother, an Architect, a Coal Miner, a Poet, and a Gardener. Each of us views things in his own peculiar war, each clothes the Creator in a manner which fits into his own scheme. My God, for instance, among his other professions, is an Inventor: I picture him inventing water, carbon dioxide, and haemoglobin, crabs, frogs, and cuttle fish, whales and filterpassing organisms ( in the ratio of 100,000,000,000,000,000,000,000 to 1 in size), and rejoicing greatly over these weird and ingenious things, just as I rejoice greatly over some simple bit of apparatus. But I would nor urge that God is only an Inventor: for inventors are apt, as those who know them realize, to be very dull dogs. Indeed, I should be inclined rather to imagine God to be like a University, with all its teachers and professors together: not omittin the students, for he obviously possesses, judging from his inventions, that noblest human characteristic, a sense of humour.”

Archibald Hill (1886–1977) English physiologist and biophysicist

The Ethical Dilemma of Science and Other Writings https://books.google.com.mx/books?id=zaE1AAAAIAAJ&printsec=frontcover#v=onepage&q&f=false (1960, Cap 1. Scepticism and Faith, p. 41)

God, War, People, World

“I am of the firm belief that everybody could write books and I never understand why they don't. After all, everyone speaks. Once the grammar has been learnt it is simply talking on paper and in time learning what not to say.”

Beryl Bainbridge (1932–2010) English novelist

James Vinson & D. L. Kirkpatrick (eds.), Contemporary Novelists, 2nd edition, (London: St. James Press, 1976). http://biography.jrank.org/pages/4121/Bainbridge-Beryl-Margaret-Beryl-Bainbridge-comments.html

Understanding, Learning, Time

“Many fields use patterns in various ways: In music and literature, a pattern is the coherent structure or design of a song or book. In art, a pattern is the composition or plan of a work of graphic or plastic art. In architecture, a pattern is an architectural design or style. In psychology, a pattern is a thinking mechanism that is basic to the brain's operation, helping one to perceive things quickly. In archeology, a pattern is a group of phases having several distinguishing and fundamental features in common. In linguistics, a pattern is the manner in which smaller units of language are grouped into larger units…”

Peter Coad (1953) American software entrepreneur

Source: Object-oriented patterns. (1992), p. 152

Art, Music, Way, Literature

“There’s an editor for you.
They’re all the same. At first they’re all honey and sweet talk, with those long alcoholic lunches and blue-sky conversation about million-copy printings while they wheedle you into signing the contract. Then they turn nasty. They want the actual book delivered. When they don’t get it, or when the censors say they can’t print it, then there isn’t any more sweet talk and all the conversation is about how the aediles will escort you to debtors’ prison.”

Frederik Pohl (1919–2013) American science fiction writer and editor

Waiting for the Olympians (p. 257)
Platinum Pohl (2005)

Alcohol

“The Koran is a fascist book which incites violence. That is why this book, just like Mein Kampf, must be banned. The book incites hatred and killing and therefore has no place in our [Dutch] legal order.”

Geert Wilders (1963) Dutch politician

BBC News - In quotes: Geert Wilders (2010) http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/world-europe-11469579 2010s

“This book was born out of astonishment. At a time when the waves of the anti-imperialist struggle are sweeping across the world, when movements of revolt are bursting out at the very heart of advanced capitalism, when the revival of working-class action is creating a new political situation in Europe, ‘urban problems’ are becoming an essential element in the policies of governments, in the concerns of the mass media, and consequently, in the everyday life of a large section of the population.”

Manuel Castells (1942) Spanish sociologist (b.1942)

Source: The Urban Question: A Marxist Approach, 1977, p. 1

Life, World, Problem, Time

“I think my great book is Born to Sing: An Interpretation and World Survey of Bird Song.”

Charles Hartshorne (1897–2000) Philosopher

In Herbert F. Vetter, " Not The Average Philosopher http://www.harvardsquarelibrary.org/unitarians/hartshorne.html", Harvard Magazine, May/June 1997, Volume 99, Number 5. Vetter was surprised by this, given Hartshorne's dozens of substantial books on theology.

World, Bird, Thinking, Singing

“I am still making my living reciting my verses for crowds who refuse to buy my books. I must do this, as all American rhymers must, however sick I may be of the sound of my own voice.”

Vachel Lindsay (1879–1931) American poet

What It Means to Be a Poet in America (1926)

“I do not remember a time since I have been capable of loving books that I have not loved Shakespeare.”

Helen Keller book The Story of My Life

Source: The Story of My Life (1903), Ch. 21

Love, Time

“The Great Books show … that even those thinkers of the past who are now often looked upon as the most reactionary, the medieval theologians, insisted, as Aristotle had before them, that the truth of any statement is its conformity to reality or fact, and that sense experience is required to discover the particular matters of fact that test the truth of general statements about the nature of things.”

Robert Maynard Hutchins (1899–1977) philosopher and university president

Great Books: The Foundation of a Liberal Education (1954)

Truth, Nature, Reality, Sense

“I went to Cambridge to do higher mathematics, that was my first goal and appearing in the university exams in mathematics. You are given a menu of various branches of mathematics, pure as well as applied. So I found that applied aspects, especially application to astronomy were very interesting. And the speakers on both courses, that is the lecturers were also very good. At that time, I also read a book by Fred Hoyle called ‘Frontiers of Astronomy’, which gave a very readable account for a layman for what was happening in astronomy. So, all these factors made me go into the research field of astronomy. Because one is required to choose which branch of mathematics one takes as research field. In Cambridge, astronomy is treated as a branch of mathematics. So I choose that.”

Jayant Narlikar (1938) Indian physicist

An Exclusive Interview with Prof. Jayant Vishnu Narlikar

Mathematics, Universe, Appearance, Time

“No efforts of mine could avail to make the book easy reading.”

Ronald Fisher book The Genetical Theory of Natural Selection

Preface, p. x.
The Genetical Theory of Natural Selection (1930)

Effort, Reading

“you're rich in love
you're great bed
you'll see the world
you'll knock 'em dead
and all the thick books that you've read
will count for nothing in the end”

Amanda Palmer (1976) American punk-cabaret musician

"Straight" Live (2004)
Lyrics

Love, World, Reading, Dead

“I have known books written on Tolerance, the proper title of which would be — intolerant or intolerable books on tolerance. Should not a man who writes a book expressly to inculcate tolerance learn to treat with respect, or at least with indulgence, articles of faith which tens of thousands ten times told of his fellow-subjects or his fellow-creatures believe with all their souls, and upon the truth of which they rest their tranquillity in this world, and their hopes of salvation in the next, — those articles being at least maintainable against his arguments, and most certainly innocent in themselves?”

Samuel Taylor Coleridge (1772–1834) English poet, literary critic and philosopher

3 January 1834
Table Talk (1821–1834)

Truth, World, Faith, Hope

“Politicians are all on the same platform when it comes down to me. I think it’s because they think that if they can satisfy the Muslim fundamentalists they will get votes. I believe I am a victim of votebank politics. This also shows that how weak the democracy is and politicians ask votes by banning a writer … Even though I am not staying there, she (Banerjee) has not allowed my book ‘Nirbasan’ to be published. Also, she has stopped the broadcast of a TV serial scripted by me after Muslim fundamentalists objected to it. She is not allowing me to enter the state… This is a dangerous opposition … I wrote to Mamata Banerjee. But there was no response to that… No I am not going to write to her again. I do not think she will consider my request. I feel very hopeless because I expected something positive. I think when it comes down to me, she has similar vision like that of the Left leaders…. I do not consider India as a foreign country. The history of this country is my history. It’s the country of my forefathers. I love this country and in Kolkata, I feel at home because I can relate that place to my homeland. … I have sacrificed my freedom and have been sacrificing for a big cause… All these (problems) are because of my writings. I could have stopped writing against fundamentalists and possibly the bans would have been removed and I had got back my freedom and allowed to enter my motherland again. But I will never do that. … I have spoken of humanism and equal rights for women and secularism stating that religion and nation should be treated separately. One should not get confused with nation and religion. Rules should be made based on equality, and not on religion. … I know that only by writing I will not be able to change an entire society. The laws need to be changed. Equal rights cannot be established in a short time, it requires a long time and huge efforts … I have got many awards but the best is when people come forward and tell me that my writings have help them change their vision,… I do not think I would have been treated in the same manner if I was born there (Europe). I am a writer, not an activist… I write with a pen and if you have any problem why do not you pick up a pen to protest…. The surprising thing in this part of the world is that they have picked up arms against me because I have expressed my views. I have never enforced my thoughts on anybody ever, then why they are trying to kill me. I am not a supporter of violence.”

Taslima Nasrin (1962) Poet, columnist, novelist

Taslima Nasrin about Mamata, Indian Express https://indianexpress.com/article/india/mamata-banerjee-turned-out-harsher-than-left-in-my-case-taslima-nasreen-4486028/

Love, Women, People, World

“I am a writer today because I learned to love reading as a child — and mostly on account of the Oz books.”

Elizabeth Gilbert (1969) American writer

On the inspiration she received from reading, and the works of L. Frank Baum.

Love, Learning, Reading

“The books I write because I want to read them, the games because I want to play them, and stories I tell because I find them exciting personally.”

Gary Gygax (1938–2008) American writer and game designer

GameSpy interview, Pt. 2 (16 August 2004)

Game, Reading, Personality

“A proposed profile of UML—Executable UML—supports creating a complete and implementation-neutral self-contained expression of application functionality. Steven J. Mellor and Marc J. Balcer define this profile in their book Executable UML: A Foundation for Model-Driven Architecture”

Grady Booch (1955) American software engineer

The Limits of Software

Support

“I have often thought that nothing would do more extensive good at small expense than the establishment of a small circulating library in every county, to consist of a few well-chosen books, to be lent to the people of the country under regulations as would secure their safe return in due time.”

Thomas Jefferson (1743–1826) 3rd President of the United States of America

Letter to John Wyche (19 May 1809)
1800s, Post-Presidency (1809)

People, Time, Country

“Christ called an army up to go forth and conquer in his name. In the book of Acts we are told of the Christians that these people are turning the world upside down. It would be wonderful if that were said of us again.”

Rousas John Rushdoony (1916–2001) American theologian

Audio lectures, Dominion (n. d.)

People, World, Christ

“If you are in a strait, a very good indication as to choice—perhaps the best you could get—is a book you have a great curiosity about. You are then in the readiest and best of all possible conditions to improve by that book.”

Thomas Carlyle (1795–1881) Scottish philosopher, satirical writer, essayist, historian and teacher

1860s, On The Choice Of Books (1866)

“In scientific information, then, we find that subjects - the themes and topics on which books and articles are written - cluster into fields, each of which can be analysed into its characteristic set of facets of terms.”

Brian Campbell Vickery (1918–2009) British information theorist

Source: Classification and indexing in science (1958), Chapter 1: The need for classification, p. 11.

“I would meet screenwriters in L. A. who would write these very complicated sitcoms like Cheers and who'd have the most extraordinary sense of plot of anybody I've ever met. I saw the insides of lots of great houses. And I met people who you and I would regard as famous, and then realized some very interesting things about them, like how lonely they are. It was those years I was least a minority. In a sense, I owned the world. I owned it because I had certain charms that allowed me to insinuate myself into the world. Intellectually, it was very satisfying to be at the edge of this world. But when it became clear to me that I wanted to write this book, I had to divorce myself from that world and move to San Francisco.”

Richard Rodríguez (1944) American journalist and essayist

Violating the Boundaries: An Interview with Richard Rodriguez (1999)

People, World, Sense, Housing

“Thirty years from now the big university campuses will be relics. Universities won't survive. It's as large a change as when we first got the printed book. Do you realize that the cost of higher education has risen as fast as the cost of health care? And for the middle-class family, college education for their children is as much of a necessity as is medical care—without it the kids have no future. Such totally uncontrollable expenditures, without any visible improvement in either the content or the quality of education, means that the system is rapidly becoming untenable. Higher education is in deep crisis.”

Peter F. Drucker (1909–2005) American business consultant

Seeing things as they really are http://www.forbes.com/forbes/1997/0310/5905122a_7.html, Forbes (March 10, 1997) 1990s and later

Children, Health, Education, Family

“The present book is not a methodology of mathematics in the sense that I will systematically show how some teaching matter should taught; it is not even a systematic analysis of subject matter. I hardly ever refer to well-organized classroom experiments evaluated by statistical methods, nor do I cite experimental results of developmental psychology or the psychology of learning. Maybe the most striking feature is that this book contains few quotations. I will try to justify all these features.”

Hans Freudenthal (1905–1990) Dutch mathematician

Source: Mathematics as an Educational Task (1973), p. v;As cited in: Ben Wilbrink (2013)

Mathematics, Sense, Learning

“Now there is one outstandingly important fact regarding Spaceship Earth, and that is that no instruction book came with it.”

Buckminster Fuller (1895–1983) American architect, systems theorist, author, designer, inventor and futurist

1960s, Operating Manual for Spaceship Earth (1963)

“Your own inner capabilities and potentials are more varied and powerful than you realize. The purpose of this book is to enable you to recognize and use them in daily life. You use them now, but in a subdued and inefficient manner. They work in spite of you.”

Jane Roberts (1929–1984) American Writer

Source: How To Develop Your ESP Power (1966), p. xvii

Life

“I'm aware that many of my friends will be saddened and shocked, or shock-saddened, over some of the chapters in The Catcher in the Rye. Some of my best friends are children. In fact, all my best friends are children. It's almost unbearable for me to realize that my book will be kept on a shelf out of their reach.”

Jerome David Salinger (1919–2010) American writer

As quoted in The Twentieth Century (1972) by Caroline Farrar Ware, p. 429

Children

“The erasure of a human subspecies is largely painless — to us — if we know little enough about it. A dead Chinaman is of little import to us whose awareness of things Chinese is bounded by an occasional dish of chow mein. We grieve only for what we know. The erasure of Silphium from western Dane County is no cause for grief if one knows it only as a name in a botany book.”

Aldo Leopold book A Sand County Almanac

“July: Prairie Birthday”, p. 48.
A Sand County Almanac, 1949, "May: Back from the Argentine," "June: The Alder Fork," "July: Great Possessions," and "July: Prairie Birthday"

Dead

“Almost all Muslims, including the most enlightened, feel offended by Rushdie's novel or, rather, by reports they have read or heard about it. Very few people have actually read the dense and tortuous book, but they do not have to. The very idea of using the prophet Muhammad as a character in a novel is painful to many Muslims. The entire Islamic system consists of the so-called Hodud, or limits beyond which one should simply not venture. Islam does not recognize unlimited freedom of expression. Call them taboos, if you like, but Islam considers a wide variety of topics as permanently closed. Most Muslims are prepared to be broad-minded about most things but never anything that even remotely touches their faith… To Muslims religion is not just a part of life. It is, in fact, life that is a part of religion. Muslims cannot understand a concept that has no rules, no limits. The Western belief in human rights, which seems to lack limits, is alien to Islamic traditions… The fact that Rushdie propagated his heresy in a book is of especial significance to Muslims. Islam is the religion of the book par excellence.”

Amir Taheri (1942) Iranian journalist

Few cultures hold the written and printed word in so much awe as Muslims, even though the vast majority are illiterate. When a Muslim wants to clinch an argument he says, 'It is written.'
"Khomeini's Scapegoat", Times, London, (February 13, 1989).

Life, Pain, People, Faith

“Wilson was not, in the academic sense, a scholar or historian. He was an enormous reader, one of those readers who are perpetually on the scent from book to book. He was the old-style man of letters, but galvanized and with the iron of purpose in him.”

V.S. Pritchett (1900–1997) British writer and critic

V. S. Pritchett, The Tale Bearers: English and American Writers (1980) [Random House, ISBN 0-394-74683-X], "Edmund Wilson: Towards Revolution," p. 141
The Tale Bearers: English and American Writers (1980)

Sense

“The debate has not genuinely altered the old consensus, but it has been an interesting case-study in manipulation by unscrupled academics. How else should we call the practice of seemingly learned publications advertising themselves as "objective" studies of the controversy, but systematically concealing the arguments put forth by one of the parties? … The VHP scholars have pointed out 4 cases of attempted fraud by their opponents”

Koenraad Elst (1959) orientalist, writer

removing relevant old books from libraries, adding words on an old map
1990s, The Ayodhya Demolition: an Evaluation (1995)

Fraud, Study, Learning

“I assure you that I shall never cease to exert myself to the utmost in the cause of reform, and that I will never decline any office which may increase my power to effect it. I am nearly certain of being nominated to the office of Moderator in the year 1818-1819, and as I am an examiner in virtue of my office, for the next year I shall pursue a course even more decided than hitherto, since I shall feel that men have been prepared for the change, and will then be enabled to have acquired a better system by the publication of improved elementary books. I have considerable influence as a lecturer, and I will not neglect it. It is by silent perseverance only, that we can hope to reduce the many-headed monster of prejudice and make the University answer her character as the loving mother of good learning and science.”

George Peacock (1791–1858) Scottish mathematician

Letter to a friend (1817) discussing, as a representative of the Analytical Society, the use of the "French" differential notation, as opposed to the "English" or "Newtonian" dot notation, for mathematical analysis, in the examination of the Mathematical Tripos at Cambridge. As quoted by Alexander Macfarlane, Lectures on Ten British Physicists of the Nineteenth Century https://books.google.com/books?id=43SBAAAAIAAJ (1916)

Love, Men, Hope, Feeling

“Having books published is very destructive to writing. It is even worse than making love too much. Because when you make love too much at least you get a damned clarte that is like no other light. A very clear and hollow light.”

Ernest Hemingway (1899–1961) American author and journalist

Letter to Bernard Berenson (2 October 1952); published in Ernest Hemingway: Selected Letters 1917–1961 (1981) edited by Carlos Baker

Love, Making love, Light

“Disparage no book, for it is also a part of the world.”

Nachman of Breslov (1772–1810) Ukrainian rabbi

Attributed

World, Parting

“I was never able to pray
but let me inscribe my name
in the book of waves.”

Edward Hirsch (1950)

'I was never able to pray'

“"Is this really a Polar ship?" people asked;… our paper-supply which was in all respects as fine and elegant as it could be:… From one of the largest houses in Christiania we had a complete set of kitchen utensils and breakfast and dinner services, all of the best kind…. We carried an extraordinarily copious library; presents of books were showered upon us in great quantities. I suppose the Fram's library at the present moment contains at least 3,000 volumes.”

Roald Amundsen (1872–1928) Norwegian polar researcher, who was the first to reach the South Pole

Sydpolen (The South Pole) (1912)

People, Housing

“If so, her motion must be influenced by it; perhaps she is retained in her orbit thereby. However, though the power of gravity is not sensibly weakened in the little change of distance, at which we can place ourselves from the centre of the earth, yet it is very possible that, so high as the moon, this power may differ much in strength from what it is here. To make an estimate what might be the degree of this diminution, he considered with himself that, if the moon be retained in her orbit by the force of gravity, no doubt the primary planets are carried round the sun by the like power. And, by comparing the periods of the several planets with their distances from the sun, he found that if any power like gravity held them in their courses, its strength must decrease in the duplicate proportion of the increase of distance. This he concluded by supposing them to move in perfect circles concentrical to the sun, from which the orbits of the greatest part of them do not much differ. Supposing therefore the power of gravity, when extended to the moon, to decrease in the same manner, he computed whether that force would be sufficient to keep the moon in her orbit. In this computation, being absent from books, he took the common estimate, in use among geographers and our seamen before Norwood had measured the earth, that 60 English miles were contained in one degree of latitude on the surface of the earth. But as this is a very faulty supposition, each degree containing about 691/2 of our miles, his computation did not answer expectation; whence he concluded, that some other cause must at least join with the action of the power of gravity on the moon. On this account he laid aside, for that time, any farther thoughts upon this matter.”

Henry Pemberton (1694–1771) British doctor

Republished in: Stephen Peter Rigaud (1838) Historical Essay on the First Publication of Sir Newton's Principia http://books.google.com/books?id=uvMGAAAAcAAJ&pg=RA1-PA49. p. 50-51 Preface to View of Newton's Philosophy, (1728)

Change, Time, Sun, Parting

“You've got enough in here that people who get hold of this — like AP or any of the state-controlled media — they're going to focus on the soap opera aspects of your book and they're going to ignore what is truly one of the most substantive policy books I've read.”

Rush Limbaugh (1951) U.S. radio talk show host, Commentator, author, and television personality

On Sarah Palin's Going Rogue: An American Life, The Rush Limbaugh Show, November 20, 2009 http://mediamatters.org/mmtv/200911130014

People, Reading

“It's a book about the history of the Hindus, from 50 million B. C. E. to the present. It says that there is no evidence that Rama was born in the place that is now known as Ayodhya and there is no evidence that there was a Hindu temple on the spot where the Babur Mosque was. And that there is no evidence that Rama and a bunch of monkeys built a bridge from India to Sri Lanka, as the Hindu Right have claimed. That's just mythology, which is lovely, I've studied it all my life, but you don't legislate on the basis of mythology.”

Wendy Doniger (1940) American Indologist

About her book [ The Hindus: An Alternative History].
Q&A with Wendy Doniger, the Mircea Eliade Distinguished Service Professor and author of The Hindus

Love, Life, History, Study

“It won't be covered in the book. The source code has to be useful for something, after all…”

Larry Wall (1954) American computer programmer and author, creator of Perl

[10160@jpl-devvax.JPL.NASA.GOV, 1990]
Usenet postings, 1990

“Many of the narratives can only tend to excite ideas the worst calculated for a female breast: Every thing is called plainly and roundly by its name; and the annals of a Brothel would scarcely furnish a greater choice of indecent expressions. Yet this is the Book, which young Women are recommended to study.”

Matthew Lewis (writer) book The Monk

Page 259.
The Monk (1796)

Women, Idea, Study

“Well, Aimee Semple McPherson has written a book. And were you to call it a little peach, you would not be so much as scratching its surface. It is the story of her life, and it is called In the Service of the King, which title is perhaps a bit dangerously suggestive of a romantic novel. It may be that this autobiography is set down in sincerity, frankness and simple effort. It may be, too, that the Statue of Liberty is situated in Lake Ontario.”

Dorothy Parker (1893–1967) American poet, short story writer, critic and satirist

"Our Lady of the Loudspeaker" in The New Yorker (25 February 1928)

Life, Effort, Sincerity

“Because I was stupid, I said, To hell with it, and I joined a drama school. [It was a ridiculously little school, which was first run by a very clever woman, but she soon was replaced by] "a nitwit, who had read a few books on the Actor's Studio and was very much into analysis, instead of teaching us how to walk and talk!"”

Donald O'Brien (actor) (1930–2003) Italian film and TV actor

Euro Trash Cinema magazine interview (March 1996)

Stupidity, School, Hell, Reading

“No book is fairly judged till it is read twice, and at distant periods. It is curious to note the variation of taste in ourselves. I can remember I devoured the story keenly, dwelt on all that partook of sentiment, and never questioned the depth of any remark. I now find that I take chief interest in what brings out character. I enter more into the humourous, and am every now and then tempted to analyse the truth of a deduction. I think more over what I am reading, and delight more in connecting the world of fiction with that of reality.”

Letitia Elizabeth Landon (1802–1838) English poet and novelist

No.17. The Monastery — MARY AVENEL.
Literary Remains

Truth, World, Question, Thinking

“A few months ago I read an interview with a critic; a well-known critic; an unusually humane and intelligent critic. The interviewer had just said that the critic “sounded like a happy man”, and the interview was drawing to a close; the critic said, ending it all: “I read, but I don’t get any time to read at whim. All the reading I do is in order to write or teach, and I resent it. We have no TV, and I don’t listen to the radio or records, or go to art galleries or the theater. I’m a completely negative personality.”
As I thought of that busy, artless life—no records, no paintings, no plays, no books except those you lecture on or write articles about—I was so depressed that I went back over the interview looking for some bright spot, and I found it, one beautiful sentence: for a moment I had left the gray, dutiful world of the professional critic, and was back in the sunlight and shadow, the unconsidered joys, the unreasoned sorrows, of ordinary readers and writers, amateurishly reading and writing “at whim”. The critic said that once a year he read Kim, it was plain, at whim: not to teach, not to criticize, just for love—he read it, as Kipling wrote it, just because he liked to, wanted to, couldn’t help himself. To him it wasn’t a means to a lecture or an article, it was an end; he read it not for anything he could get out of it, but for itself. And isn’t this what the work of art demands of us? The work of art, Rilke said, says to us always: You must change your life. It demands of us that we too see things as ends, not as means—that we too know them and love them for their own sake. This change is beyond us, perhaps, during the active, greedy, and powerful hours of our lives, but during the contemplative and sympathetic hours of our reading, our listening, our looking, it is surely within our power, if we choose to make it so, if we choose to let one part of our nature follow its natural desires. So I say to you, for a closing sentence: Read at whim! read at whim!”

Randall Jarrell (1914–1965) poet, critic, novelist, essayist

“Poets, Critics, and Readers”, pp. 112–113
A Sad Heart at the Supermarket: Essays & Fables (1962)

Love, Life, World, Beauty

“Have you ever noticed flocks of swallows flying past between the lines of certain books, whole verses of trembling, pointed swallows? One must interpret the flights of those birds…”

Bruno Schulz (1892–1942) Polish novelist and painter

“Spring” http://www.schulzian.net/translation/sanatorium/spring01.htm His father, Books

Bird, Past, Flying

“The "I" who speaks in this book is by no means the author. Rather, the author wishes that the reader may come to see himself in this "I": that the reader may not simply relate to what is said here as he would to history, but rather that while reading he will actually converse with himself, deliberate back and forth, deduce conclusions, make decisions like his representative in the book, and through his own work and reflection, purely out of his own resources, develop and build within himself the philosophical disposition that is presented to him in this book merely as a picture.”

Johann Gottlieb Fichte book The Vocation of Man

Source: The Vocation of Man (1800), P. Preuss, trans. (1987), p. 2

History, Decision, Reading

“Can any rational person believe that the Bible is anything but a human document? We now know pretty well where the various books came from, and about when they were written. We know that they were written by human beings who had no knowledge of science, little knowledge of life, and were influenced by the barbarous morality of primitive times, and were grossly ignorant of most things that men know today.”

Clarence Darrow (1857–1938) American lawyer and leading member of the American Civil Liberties Union

Why I Am An Agnostic (1929)

Life, Men, Knowledge, Science

“In true education, anything that comes to our hand is as good as a book: the prank of a page-boy, the blunder of a servant, a bit of table talk— they are all part of the curriculum.”

Michel De Montaigne (1533–1592) (1533-1592) French-Occitan author, humanistic philosopher, statesman

The Autobiography of Michel de Montaigne, Chapter III, pg. 24 (Translated by Marvin Lowenthal
Attributed

Education, Boy, Parting

“Perhaps it is the positive knowledge that humans now possess the means to destroy their whole planet, the fear that they have in this way themselves become the gods, dreadfully charged with their own continued existence, that has made comic-book and movie myth escapist.”

Nadine Gordimer (1923–2014) South african Nobel-winning writer

Writing and Being (1991)

God, Fear, Way, Knowledge

“The newspaper is in all its literalness the bible of democracy, the book out of which a people determines its conduct.”

Walter Lippmann (1889–1974) American journalist

quoted by Tim Rutten in the Los Angeles Times, Saturday, October 7, 2006

People, Democracy

“This is how Tam Dalyell is feeling -- about the Belgrano, about Westland, the miners' strike, Libya, GCHQ, Zircon, the Peter Wright affair… this book is really just a cry of rage: "I was right -- surely you can see -- look, here is the evidence -- let's go through it all carefully again -- how can anyone disagree..?" But the thrust of the book, and the detailed evidence assembled, are for the most part familiar. Writing it all up, again, and publishing it in this way, is just one more try at persuading somebody (I don't think Mr Dalyell is quite sure whom) to say: "Yes, Tam, you were right. Off with Maggie's head!" How he loathes Mrs Thatcher. She is variously called pig-headed, a fishwife, and a mass murderess as the story proceeds. This element of personal vendetta seriously weakens his case because -- for all that he rests it upon alleged facts -- his gravest charges rely upon his imputing to her the worst imaginable motives consistent with those facts. One has to say -- without denying that his allegations of facts need answering -- that there is a certain sleight-of-hand here.”

Tam Dalyell (1932–2017) Scottish politician

Matthew Parris (Review of 'MISRULE - How Mrs Thatcher has misled Parliament from the sinking of the Belgrano to the Wright affair' by Tam Dalyell, 1987)
About

Way, Feeling, Imagination, Motivation

“My father's views for me, which were to guide his choice of college, were twofold. He really wanted me to learn; to get a good education, not so much with the idea of my making my way in the world, as from the value which he had learned to set upon intellect…. He was fond of repeating the sentence in the Eton Latin grammar—" Concessi Cantabrigiam ad capiendum ingenii cultum…." This was the proverb which presided over my whole college life. Though often dimmed, it was never lost sight of, and however much I may have had to hate the grammar on other accounts, I think no other sentence of any book has had so large a share in moulding my mind and character as that one. It was then essential to my father's plans for me that the college to be selected for me should be one where the instruction given was reputed to be good.”

Mark Pattison (1813–1884) English author and Church of England priest

Memoirs (1885)

Life, Hate, World, Education

“The main reason I became vegan was the book "." It basically changed my life. After the 2007 season I had read so much I decided to become a vegan and get rid of all the animal products -- meat and dairy. At first, it was basically just for the health benefits -- I was intrigued by the 2005 season when I cut a lot of that stuff out and got a lot better. It really changed my career, and I thought, "This might be something that helps me take my career to the next level." And it wasn't the main reason, but I like knowing everything I eat was served in a humane way.”

Pat Neshek (1980) American baseball player

"Pat Neshek: Willing to take the heat for his vegan diet" https://web.archive.org/web/20090521074430/http://www.startribune.com/lifestyle/44920792.html?elr=KArksLckD8EQDUoaEyqyP4O:DW3ckUiD3aPc:_Yyc:aUUsZ, interview with StarTribune.com (May 17, 2009).

Life, Health, Way, Change

“Virginia Woolf thought one of the pleasures of reading contemporary novels was that they forced you to exercise your judgment. There was no received opinion about a book. You had to decide for yourself whether it was good.”

Tim Parks (1954) British writer

"Why Read New Books?" The New York Review of Books (11 November 2014).

Pleasure, Exercises, Reading

“There is no such thing, wrote Oscar Wilde, as a moral or an immoral book. Books are well written, or badly written. Presumably, then, Mein Kampf would have been all right had it been better written.”

Theodore Dalrymple (1949) English doctor and writer

Trash, Violence, and Versace: But Is It Art? http://www.city-journal.org/html/8_1_urbanities-trash.html (Winter 1998). City Journal (1998 - 2008)

“I have spent 20 years writing these books. Had I wanted to say men are beasts and scream, that takes 30 seconds.”

Andrea Dworkin (1946–2005) Feminist writer

Modern Times Interview of Andrea Dworkin With Larry Josephson, on "Modern Times" (American Public Radio, 1992) (radio program) (transcript of tape (end of tape missing)) http://www.andreadworkin.com/audio/moderntimes.html, as accessed Sep. 5, 2010.

Men

“(…) I have written so far around 200 books and articles on different aspects of science, philosophy, theology, and hekmat (wisdom). (…) I never entered the service of any king as a military man or a man of office, and if I ever did have a conversation with a king, it never went beyond my medical responsibility and advice. (…) Those who have seen me know, that I did not into excess with eating, drinking or acting the wrong way. As to my interest in lil pump yuhh!! people know perfectly well and must have witnessed how I have devoted all my life to science since my youth. My patience and diligence in the pursuit of science has been such that on one special issue specifically I have written 20,000 pages (in small print), moreover I spent fifteen years of my life - night and day - writing the big collection entitled Al Hawi. It was during this time that I lost my eyesight, my hand became paralyzed, with the result that I am now deprived of reading and writing. Nonetheless, I've never given up, but kept on reading and writing with the help of others. I could make concessions with my opponents and admit some shortcomings, but I am most curious what they have to say about my scientific achievement. If they consider my approach incorrect, they could present their views and state their points clearly, so that I may study them, and if I determined their views to be right, I would admit it. However, if I disagreed, I would discuss the matter to prove my standpoint. If this is not the case, and they merely disagree with my approach and way of life, I would appreciate they only use my written knowledge and stop interfering with my behaviour.”

Muhammad ibn Zakariya al-Razi (865–925) Persian polymath, physician, alchemist and chemist, philosopher

Lost History: The Enduring Legacy of Muslim Scientists, Thinkers, and Artists

Life, Wisdom, People, Youth

“One voice in the Great Conversation itself announces this modern point of view. In the closing paragraph of his An Enquiry Concerning Human Understanding, David Hume writes: "When we run over libraries, persuaded of these principles, what havoc must we make? If we take in our hand any volume… let us ask, Does it contain any abstract reasoning concerning quantity or number? No. Does it contain any experimental reasoning concerning matter of fact and existence? No. Commit it then to flames: for it can contain nothing but sophistry and illusion."… the positivists of our own day, would commit to burning or, what is the same, to dismissal from serious consideration… Those books… argue the case against the kind of positivism that asserts that everything except mathematics and experimental science is sophistry and illusion…. The Great Conversation… contains both sides of the issue.”

Robert Maynard Hutchins (1899–1977) philosopher and university president

Great Books: The Foundation of a Liberal Education (1954)

Mathematics, Understanding, Science

“She curled up on the pallet and stared into the dark, praying for a peaceful sleep.
Prayers didn’t do no good, oui. Antonio chased her all night. (In the book Antonio, her father, beats and sexually abuses her long-term; she eventually kills him)”

Nalo Hopkinson book Midnight Robber

Section 4 (p. 222)
Midnight Robber (2000)

Peace, Sleep, Night

“Those who want to burn books are either afraid of the ideas contained within the covers or they haven't the courage to stand up for the views which they themselves profess to hold.”

Tommy Douglas (1904–1986) Scottish-born Canadian politician

Speech, Saskatchewan Legislature, February 17, 1954.

Idea, Courage

“Life-affirming people are a bit creepy and self-consciously life-affirming art is usually awful.
My books tend to have happy endings, or at least that’s one way of reading them. My characters are exuberant and funny as well as dark. Duality is the essence of my voice so it’s appropriate for me to have an evil twin to blame things on.”

Carole Morin British writer

Chin Wag At The Slaughterhouse (2013)

Life, People, Art, Way

“There were no books in Eden, and there will be none in heaven;”

Augustine Birrell (1850–1933) British politician

"Gossip in a Library"
In the Name of the Bodleian, and Other Essays

“Editor’s Preface In this book, originating in the year 1848, the requirement for being a Christian is forced up by the pseudonymous author to the supreme ideality. Yet the requirement should indeed be stated, presented, and heard. From the Christian point of view, there ought to be no scaling down of the requirement, nor suppression of it-instead of a personal admission and confession. The requirement should be heard-and I understand what is said as spoken to me alone—so that I might learn not only to resort to grace but to resort to it in relation to the use of grace. S. K.”

Sören Kierkegaard (1813–1855) Danish philosopher and theologian, founder of Existentialism

Source: 1850s, Practice in Christianity (September 1850), p. xii

Understanding, Learning, Personality

“If it is permissible to write plays that are not intended to be seen, I should like to see who can prevent me from writing a book no one can read.”

Georg Christoph Lichtenberg (1742–1799) German scientist, satirist

F 1
Aphorisms (1765-1799), Notebook F (1776-1779)

Reading

“[After discovering Soren's former home is abandoned] Then Twilight spoke, "Soren, they're gone. Maybe something happened to them. You shouldn't take it personally. Buck up now, old buddy."
"Personally? What do you know, Twilight, that is personal about any family? You've never had a family. Remember, you're always telling us about how much you learned in your own orphan school of tough learning. You don't know the feel of a mother's down. You don't know what it's like to hear stories from a father, or to hear him sing. Do you know what a psalm is, Twilight? I bet you don't. Well, we Barn Owls know about psalms and books and the feeling of down."
Twilight's feathers had ruffled up, spiky with ice crystals. He looked fearsome. "I'll tell you what I know, you miserable little owl. The whole world is my family. I know the softness of a fox's fur, and the strange green light that comes into their eyes during the spring moons. I know how to fish because I learned from an eagle. And when meat is scarce I know how to find the ripest part of a rotten tree and peck the juiciest bugs from it. I know plenty."”

Kathryn Lasky (1944) American children's writer

Source: The Capture (2003), Chapter Twenty-four: "Empty Hollows", p. 181

World, School, Family, Feeling

“A hot topic of late, expressed most notably in Bernie Siegel's best-selling books, has emphasized the role of positive attitude in combating such serious diseases as cancer. From the depths of my skeptical and rationalist soul, I ask the Lord to protect me from California touchie-feeliedom.”

Stephen Jay Gould (1941–2002) American evolutionary biologist

Source: Full House (1996), p. 47

Disease, Soul

“But especially he loved to run in the dim twilight of the summer midnights, listening to the subdued and sleepy murmurs of the forest, reading signs and sounds as a man may read a book, and seeking for the mysterious something that called -- called, waking or sleeping, at all times, for him to come.”

Jack London book Call of the Wild

The Call of the Wild (1903)

Love, Sleep, Time, Reading

“For some time I debated over whether I should start these memoirs at the beginning or at the end, that is, whether I should put my birth or my death in first place. Since common usage would call for beginning with birth, two considerations led me to adopt a different method: the first is that I am not exactly a writer who is dead but a dead man who is a writer, for whom the grave was a second cradle; the second is that the writing would be more distinctive and novel in that way. Moses, who also wrote about his death, didn't place it at the opening but at the close: a radical difference between this book and the Pentateuch.”

Machado de Assis (1839–1908) Brazilian writer

Algum tempo hesitei se devia abrir estas memórias pelo princípio ou pelo fim, isto é, se poria em primeiro lugar o meu nascimento ou a minha morte. Suposto o uso vulgar seja começar pelo nascimento, duas considerações me levaram a adotar diferente método: a primeira é que eu não sou propriamente um autor defunto mas um defunto autor, para quem a campa foi outro berço; a segunda é que o escrito ficaria assim mais galante e mais novo. Moisés, que também contou a sua morte, não a pôs no intróito, mas no cabo: diferença radical entre este livro e o Pentateuco.
Source: As Memórias Póstumas de Brás Cubas (1881), Ch. 1 (opening words), p. 7.

Death, Way, Birth, Time

“You must handle [the House of Lords] a little more firmly, and the time has come for unflinching and resolute action. For my part, I would not remain a member of a Liberal Cabinet one hour unless I knew that the Cabinet had determined not to hold office after the next General Election unless full powers are accorded to it which would enable it to place on the Statute Book of the realm a measure which will ensure that the House of Commons in future can carry, not merely Tory Bills, as it does now, but Liberal and progressive measures in the course of a single Parliament either with or without the sanction of the House of Lords.”

David Lloyd George (1863–1945) Former Prime Minister of the United Kingdom

Speech to the National Liberal Club (3 December 1909), quoted in Better Times: Speeches by the Right Hon. D. Lloyd George, M.P., Chancellor of the Exchequer (London: Hodder & Stoughton, 1910), pp. 179-180.
Chancellor of the Exchequer

Time, Future, Parting, Housing

“If the project was lucky enough to have a writer or two well-informed about some specialized subject, and if their work was not degraded in quality by the majority of people, whose knowledge of the subject is based on paragraphs in books and mere mentions in college classes, then there might be a good, credible article on that specialized subject. Otherwise, there will be no article at all, a very amateurish-sounding article, or an article that looks like it might once have been pretty good, but which has been hacked to bits by hoi polloi.”

Larry Sanger (1968) American former professor, co-founder of Wikipedia, founder of Citizendium and other projects

"Why Wikipedia Must Jettison Its Anti-Elitism" at kuro5hin (31 December 2004).

People, Knowledge

“I've always been fascinated with the one question: Did the Germans know? … The scariest book I ever bought was Mein Kampf. I bought it because I wanted to answer that question. The answer was "Yes, they knew." I think the Germans, however, were an awful lot like we are now. We're kind of living in a denial, "no that can't really be happening, no that really—" You don't want to believe some things, but you have to. You have to actually think about them.”

Glenn Beck (1964) U.S. talk radio and television host

2000s, 2009

Question, Thinking

“Reporter: The “Protocols” trial is on today. I’ve been assigned to report on it for my paper.
Reporter 2: What’s your hurry Carl? The Jewish community’s lawyer is trying to show the damage done by the “Protocols of Zion” book.
Lawyer: Your honor, we have demonstrated that the “Protocols” is ‘’’smut…’’’ I would conclude by exhibiting evidence of its influence on public opinion as a fraud.
Judge: You may proceed!
Lawyer: Since its first publication in Russia by Dr. Nilus in 1905, four printings have been distributed there!
In 1919, type script copies were distributed to delegated at the Versailles peace conference by white Russians.
In England Victor Marsden translated the “protocols” into English in 1922.
In 1920, the first polish language edition was brought into the United States and South America by Polish immigrants.
In 1921, the first Arabic and the first Italian copies appeared!
In 1921, “The Times” of London published its famous expose of this false document!
And because of his fame, Henry Ford’s work deserves recounting.
Lawyer: In 1920, Henry ford the American auto magnate, bought a small newspaper, the “Dearborn Independent.” He began a series, “The International Jew,” made up of borrowings from the “Protocols of the Elders on Zion.”
Later, in 1922, it was published in sxteen language for a world-wide distribution. It sold over a ‘’’half million’’’ copies in America alone!
Reporter: Actually, Ford recanted in 1926 when he was threatened with a libel suit.

Reporter 2: Really?
Reporter 3: What did he say?
Reporter: He said in part, “…To my great regret I learn that in the ‘Dearborn Independent’ there appeared articles which induced the Jews to regard me as their enemy promoting anti-Semitism!”
HE WENT ON TO SAY, “…I am…mortified that this Journal…is giving currency to ‘The Protocols of the wise men of Zion,’ which I learn to be gross forgeries…I deem it my duty…to make amends for the wrong done to the Jews as fellow men and brothers by asking their forgiveness.
HE GOES ON BY RECITING SOME OF THE MORE “evil ingredients” in the “Protocols” AND HE REFERS TO IT AS AN “infamous forgery.”
Reporter 3: DID HIS APOLOGY CHANGE ANYTHING?? HENRY FORD WAS FAMOUS the world over…his apology must have had influence!
Reporter: Not very much. In fact publication increased all over the globe.
Reporter 3: Look! Here I have two French translations of the “Protocols of the Elders of Zion” that were published in ‘’’France,’’’ dated 1934. Later they had many printings!
Judge: …I hope to see the day when nobody will be able to understand why otherwise sane and reasonable men should torment their brains for fourteen days over the authenticity or fabrication of the “Protocols of Zion”’’’…I regard the “protocols” as ridiculous nonsense!
Reporter: Good news! …judge Meyer found against the Nazis and imposed a fine on them…

Publisher: We will publish the judge’s decision!
Reporter: This should put an end to the “Protocols” at last!”

Will Eisner (1917–2005) American cartoonist

Source: The Plot: The Secret Story of the Protocols of the Elders of Zion (10/2/2005), pp. 102-107

Men, World, Peace, Hope

“People tell me, "Oh, you must not advocate doing anything illegal." My answer to them is that I have been a law-abiding man all my life. I believe in law and order. I believe that we must have a society governed strictly by laws, not by mobs or by any tyrant's whims of the moment -- or by any clever tribe of alien manipulators who have gained control of our mass media. But does anyone really believe that we have a society governed by laws today? Let us remember that we are living now in the era of O. J. Simpson and Bill Clinton. We have laws on the books, and we have police and courts which have the theoretical responsibility for enforcing those laws. And when it is Politically Correct to do so, they will.”

William Luther Pierce (1933–2002) American white nationalist

Our Revolutionary Right, 1999.
1990s, 1990

Life, People, Law

“The mortality of all inanimate things is terrible to me, but that of books most of all.”

William Dean Howells (1837–1920) author, critic and playwright from the United States

Letter to Charles Eliot Norton (6 April 1903)

“What is striking about the books which were written, especially during the eighteenth century, to defend Christianity against these attacks, is the degree to which they accept the assumptions of their assailants. Christianity is defended as being reasonable. It can be accommodated within these assumptions, which all reasonable people hold. There is little suggestion that the assumptions themselves are to be challenged. The defense is, in fact, a tactical retreat. But, as later history has shown, these tactical retreats can--if repeated often enough--begin to look more like a rout.”

Lesslie Newbigin (1909–1998) Christian missionary

The Gospel in a Pluralist Society. Eerdmans, 1989 (reprinted 2002),3.

People, History

“The biogeographic evidence for evolution is now so powerful that I have never seen a creationist book, article, or lecture that has tried to refute it. Creationists simply pretend that the evidence doesn’t exist.”

Jerry Coyne (1949) American biologist

Source: Why Evolution is True (2009), p. 88

“The preface to the French edition of that work contains the following passage: "To me the French edition of my work is not a mere translation, but a transcription of ideas into a language in which it should have been written in the first place… I proudly acknowledge… my master. His words are among the most brilliant recollections of my youth; his piercing wisdom and potent prose have inspired my efforts of a riper age. To the memory of Henri Poincaré, the intellectual giant who was the first to recognize the role which the idiosyncrasies of the race play in the evolution of scientific ideas, I dedicate this book.”

Tobias Dantzig (1884–1956) American mathematician

Preface
Henri Poincaré, Critic of Crisis: Reflections on His Universe of Discourse (1954)

Wisdom, Youth, Age, Idea

“In his 1930 book, Dirac took for granted that measurements could be made, but was very vague about what was actually involved.”

Willis Lamb (1913–2008) American Physicist

W. E. Lamb, Sequential measurements in quantum mechanics, in Quantum Measurements and Chaos, E. R. Pike and S. Sarkar, eds. (Plenum, New York, 1987) pp. 183-193.

“Chesterton was important — as important to me in his way as C. S. Lewis had been.
You see, while I loved Tolkien and while I wished to have written his book, I had no desire at all to write like him. Tolkien’s words and sentences seemed like natural things, like rock formations or waterfalls, and wanting to write like Tolkien would have been, for me, like wanting to blossom like a cherry tree or climb a tree like a squirrel or rain like a thunderstorm. Chesterton was the complete opposite. I was always aware, reading Chesterton, that there was someone writing this who rejoiced in words, who deployed them on the page as an artist deploys his paints upon his palette. Behind every Chesterton sentence there was someone painting with words, and it seemed to me that at the end of any particularly good sentence or any perfectly-put paradox, you could hear the author, somewhere behind the scenes, giggling with delight.”

Neil Gaiman (1960) English fantasy writer

"Mythcon 35 Guest of Honor Speech", in Mythprint (October 2004) http://www.mythsoc.org.nyud.net:8090/mythcon/35/speech/

Love, Way, Nature, Tree

“It might be my favorite book of mine. It was a very exciting time in my life. I was writing that book while I was at college. Sort of like the best of times, the worst of times. There was a lot of elation, there was a lot of despair. It was just a really fun book to write. I loved mimicking all the different voices. The stream of conscious does get a little out of hand. I kind of like that about the book. It's kind of all over the place. It's casual. It's scruffy. That's the one book of mine that I have a very, very soft spot for.”

Bret Easton Ellis (1964) American novelist

On The Rules of Attraction http://www.amazon.com/gp/feature.html?docId=571852

Love, Life, Time, Despair

Quotes about books page 32

Quotes about books
page 32