Quotes about books
page 40

“I have said that Marinetti was.... exceptionally gifted, and I should add that I never saw him twiddling his thumbs even for ten minutes.... beside his desk he often kept piles of books in which he would write dedications.... invariably with the purpose of spreading the word about Futurism.”

Carlo Carrà (1881–1966) Italian painter

Source: 1940's, La mia Vita (1945), Carlo Carrà; as quoted in Futurism, ed. Didier Ottinger (2008), p. unknown

Future

“Perhaps the author cited is one of those, who, shunning the practice of the world, have taught the world to shun return! whose poetry is too finely spun, whose philosophy is too and mystified for popular demand: perhaps we have experienced feeling which Mr. Wordsworth alludes to, in a poem worthy of simplicity and loneliness of the sentiment—"Often have I sighed to measure By myself a lonely pleasure; Sighed to think I read a book Only read perhaps by me!"”

Samuel Laman Blanchard (1804–1845) British author and journalist

"Quotations".
Sketches from Life (1846)

Pleasure, World, Feeling, Thinking

“"Some would argue, you know, in some of the books of the New Testament, the ending of the Book of Job is different. I think, if I'm not mistaken, there's one book where there's a more optimistic ending, which we believe was tacked on later." --January 3, 2004”

Howard Dean (1948) American political activist

http://www.christianitytoday.com/ct/2004/101/12.0.html

Thinking

“Here's a tip I've never used: I understand you can learn a great deal of girldom by reading Pride and Prejudice, and I own a copy, but I have never read it. I tried. It was given to me by a girl with a little not inside that read: What is in this book is the heart of a woman. I am sure the heart of a woman is pure and lovely, but the first chapter of said heart is hopelessly boring.”

Donald Miller book Blue Like Jazz: nonreligious thoughts on Christian spirituality

Blue Like Jazz (2003, Nelson Books)

Love, Girl, Understanding, Learning

“I am in the awkward situation of writing a foreword to a book by a gay person. This is an awkward situation not because Joe Perez is gay, but because I have to point it out. I feel the same damn irritation as having to refer to, say, Edmund White as a "gay writer." Nobody has to point out that I am heterosexual, although now I hear that I am not a heterosexual but a metrosexual, although, in fact, I have never had sex with a metro in my life. But I'm sure it is a wonderful experience.”

Ken Wilber (1949) American writer and public speaker

Integral Spirituality in Real Life

Life, Sex, Feeling, Personality

“One of the most amazing and perplexing features of mainstream Christianity is that seminarians who learn the historical-critical method in their Bible classes appear to forget all about it when it comes time for them to be pastors. They are taught critical approaches to Scripture, they learn about the discrepancies and contradictions, they discover all sorts of historical errors and mistakes, they come to realize that it is difficult to know whether Moses existed or what Jesus actually said and did, they find that there are other books that were at one time considered canonical but that ultimately did not become part of Scripture (for example, other Gospels and Apocalypses), they come to recognize that a good number of the books of the Bible are pseudonymous (for example, written in the name of an apostle by someone else), that in fact we don't have the original copies of any of the biblical books but only copies made centuries later, all of which have been altered. They learn all this, and yet when they enter church ministry they appear to put it back on the shelf.”

Bart D. Ehrman book Jesus, Interrupted

Source: Jesus, Interrupted (2009), Ch. 1: 'A Historical Assault on Faith'

Error, Learning, Appearance, Time

“In Hanover I built, before Hitler's time, a studio called Merzbau. This has been reproduced very much, also in the book 'Dada, Surrealism, Fantastic Art' of the Museum of Modern Art N. Y. I would like to go to Germany for restoring the Merzbau... Could I come with you to an agreement that you give me for this purpose some money? For example that I give you some pictures for the money and use it for restoring the studio... Or would you prefer that you own with me half and half?..”

Kurt Schwitters (1887–1948) German artist

Source: 1940s, I is Style (2000), p. 48 : in a letter (30 April 1946) to Oliver Kaufmann, (department of Painting and Sculpture of the MOMA, New York).

Money, Art, Time

“And yet, none of this is accidental. As we have seen in the texts that we have surveyed in this book, it is all part of a line. India turns out to be a recent construct. It turns out to be neither a country nor a nation. Hinduism turns out to be an invention – surprised at the word? You won’t be a few pages hence – of the British in the late nineteenth century. Simultaneously, it has always been inherently intolerant. Pre-Islamic India was a den of iniquity, of oppression. Islamic rule liberated the oppressed. It was in this period that the Ganga-Jamuna culture, the ‘composite culture’ of India was formed, with Amir Khusro as the great exponent of it, and the Sufi savants as the founts. The sense of nationhood did not develop even in that period. It developed only in response to British rule, and because of ideas that came to us from the West. But even this – the sense of being a country, of being a nation, such as it was – remained confined to the upper crust of Indians. It is the communists who awakened the masses to awareness and spread these ideas among them.
In a word, India is not real – only the parts are real. Class is real. Religion is real – not the threads in it that are common and special to our religions but the aspects of religion that divide us, and thus ensure that we are not a nation, a country, those elements are real. Caste is real. Region is real. Language is real – actually, that is wrong: the line is that languages other than Sanskrit are real; Sanskrit is dead and gone; in any case, it was not, the averments in the great scholar, Horace Wilson to the House of Commons Select Committee notwithstanding, that it was the very basis, the living basis of other languages of the country; rather, it was the preserve of the upper layer, the instrument of domination and oppression; one of the vehicles of perpetuating false consciousness among the hapless masses.”

Arun Shourie (1941) Indian journalist and politician

Eminent Historians: Their Technology, Their Line, Their Fraud

Religion, Idea, Sense, Parting

“If out of reading this book you get just one thing—an increased tendency to think always in terms of other people’s point of view, and see things from their angle—if you get that one thing out of this book, it may easily prove to be one of the building blocks of your career.”

Dale Carnegie How to Win Friends and Influence People

Source: How to Win Friends and Influence People (1936), p. 63

People, Thinking, Reading

“The title No Logo is not meant to be read as a literal slogan (as in No More Logos!), or a post-logo logo (there is already a No Logo clothing line, or so I'm told). Rather, it is an attempt to capture an Anticorporate attitude I see emerging among many young activists. This book is hinged on a simple hypothesis: that as more people discover the brand-name secrets of the global logo web, their outrage will fuel the next big political movement, a vast wave of opposition squarely targeting transnational corporations, particularly those with very high name-brand recognition.”

Naomi Klein (1970) Canadian author and activist

Introduction, "A Web of Brands"
No Logo: Taking Aim at the Brand Bullies 1999

People, Secret, Reading, Clothes

“I know that something dies when i give up my books, and that my memory keeps going back to them with mournful nostalgia.”

Alberto Manguel (1948) writer

Stealing Books, p. 238.
A History of Reading (1996)

Nostalgia, Memory

“This is a brutal book – sensual, rude, coarse, and cruel. However, it is timely and well-written, even witty.”

William Powell (author) book The Anarchist Cookbook

Introductory words by P. M. Bergman.
The Anarchist Cookbook (1971)

Time

“[T]he word "eternal" must by him be taken to stand for what "temporal" does not and cannot stand for; namely, the unchangeable Ground presupposed by the changing temporal; the necessary as against the contingent; the independent as against the dependent; the primary as against the derivative; the self-existent as against that which exists in and through it; the genuine cause, the causa sui, as against that which is after all nothing but effect, however it may be tied, by the causa sui, in an unrupturable chain of antecedent and consequent. Or we may say it means the noumenon as against the phenomenon; or, in fine, the thing in itself as against the thing in other. That is, the relation between the eternal and the temporal is not, and cannot be, only another case of the temporal relation. The relation is just one of pure reason, and is, in fact, sui generis: the eternal does not precede the temporal by date, but only in logic; it is the sine qua non without which the temporal cannot exist, nor is even conceivable. In brief, throughout my book I mean by the "eternal" simply the Real as contrasted with the apparent; the world of self-active causes as contrasted with the world of derivative effects, in so far passive.”

George Holmes Howison (1834–1916) American philosopher

Source: The Limits of Evolution, and Other Essays, Illustrating the Metaphysical Theory of Personal Ideaalism (1905), Appendix D: Reply to a Review in the New York Tribune, p.412-3

World, Change, Dependency

“I hope this book will throw a little light on the nature of human coutage and its lack.. when the last argument of kings viz cannon or war pursues its loud & murderous course.”

Vernon Scannell (1922–2007) British boxer and poet

Argument of Kings, 1987

War, Hope, Nature, Light

“By and large the literature of a democracy will never exhibit the order, regularity, skill, and art characteristic of aristocratic literature; formal qualities will be neglected or actually despised. The style will often be strange, incorrect, overburdened, and loose, and almost always strong and bold. Writers will be more anxious to work quickly than to perfect details. Short works will be commoner than long books, wit than erudition, imagination than depth. There will be a rude and untutored vigor of thought with great variety and singular fecundity. Authors will strive to astonish more than to please, and to stir passions rather than to charm taste.”

Alexis De Tocqueville book Democracy in America

Book One, Chapter XIII.
Democracy in America, Volume II (1840), Book One

Art, Democracy, Imagination, Literature

“The metropolitan magistrate,… pronounced on 31 July 1986, “With due regard, to the Holy Book of ‘Quran Majeed’, a close perusal of the Ayets shows that the same are harmful and teach hatred and are likely to create differences between Mohammedans on one hand and the remaining communities on the other.””

Sita Ram Goel book The Calcutta Quran Petition

The Calcutta Quran Petition (1986)

Communication

“Bill [=Willem de Kooning ] was working on a huge canvas. It was black and white. And I said to him, 'It's very curious.' You know, I came into the studio. I had my separate studio and I walked in and I said, 'It's very curious. There are no treelike shapes in that painting. The forms are all like animals more or less and organic shapes that don't resemble the forest at all, but I get the feeling of Faulkner forest from that painting.' Bill said, 'That's extraordinary.' And he went over and lifted up a pile of papers and underneath was a book by Faulkner and later he named a painting 'Light in August”

Elaine de Kooning (1918–1989) American painter

he painted in 1946 1972 - 1989 Source: an tape-recorded interview with Elaine de Kooning on August 27, 1981 http://www.aaa.si.edu/collections/interviews/oral-history-interview-elaine-de-kooning-11999; conducted by Phyllis Tuchman, for the Archives of American Art, Smithsonian Institution: Oral Histories.

Feeling, Light, Animals, Painting

“I don't sit at the same table with people like Sisi. They invited us to a dinner at the same table at the UN General Assembly. I did not attend that dinner. Next day, they did the same, I did not attend again. Why? Because that picture would be a black stain for me in the history books. It is impossible for me to sit at the same table with a coup leader. The world knows our attitude on the issue.”

Abdel Fattah el-Sisi (1954) Current President of Egypt

Turkish President Recep Tayyip Erdogan as reported by Anadolu Agency on 3 June 2015 http://aa.com.tr/en/politics/erdogan-did-not-attend-un-dinner-to-avoid-egypts-sisi/40683 About

People, World, History

“I'm not this crazy drunk guy you see on 'SuperGroup'. I like to be mellow sometimes. I like to read a lot, and I'm actually starting to write my first book. I have read so many books and now I'm trying to document this specific tour, because it is fascinating!”

Sebastian Bach (1968) Canadian singer

Chico Enterprise Record http://www.chicoer.com/buzz/ci_4825293 (December 12, 2006)

Guy, Reading

“When we think of the crowded tenements, with hard asphalt pavements and never a blade of grass or a tree; of the ghettos and colonies in cities; of the unsightly industrial towns; of the labor shacks along our great construction works; of the derailed box cars; of the immigrant section across the railroad track; of the small towns without parks or playgrounds or music or books; and then turn to the villages from which most of the immigrants come friendly in their associations and restful in their relationship to the wider life outside the longing of the immigrant to return is understood. Even the crowded cities of their native countries have places where one may rest the spirit and satisfy the hunger for beauty, by the expenditure of a carfare or the effort of a short walk. The grim beauty of our cities, their vitality, their ambition and determination, and that crude joy of living through which many currents of our life flow, will not always keep the immigrants from returning even to the poverty of some of their native towns.”

Frances Kellor (1873–1952) American sociologist

What is Americanization? (1919)

Life, Hunger, Beauty, Music

“We need to launch a nationwide campaign against superstition and belief in witchcraft. Nigerians should be told that witches are not real, and that witches and spirits are imaginary entities created by primitive minds during the infancy of human race to explain situations and issues they could not understand or resolve commonsensically. This campaign should be taken to all Nigerian schools, colleges and universities. It should be publicized over the radios and television, in the newspapers, in market places, in churches and mosques. In particular, we need to check the activities of our so called pastors and other self styled men and women of God who use the Bible or Holy books to perpetrate and justify atrocious acts and human right abuses. These religious charlatans continue to act and preach in ways that reinforce the belief in witches and provoke acts of witch accusation, persecution and killing. This has been the driving force in Akwa Ibom State, and until Nigerians learn to reject superstition and irrationalism such tragedies will continue to occur.”

Leo Igwe (1970) Nigerian human rights activist

Saving Child Witches: A Nigerian Perspective http://enblog.mukto-mona.com/2008/12/14/saving-child-witches-a-nigerian-perspective/ (December 14th, 2008)

Women, Men, God, School

“Me and a book is a party. Me and a book and a cup of coffee is an orgy.”

Robert Fripp (1946) English guitarist, composer and record producer

Robert Fripp: From King Crimson to Guitar Craft (Eric Tamm)

Coffee

“The case had caused considerable excitement among the “believers” (Mu'mins) and interest among the “infidels” (KAfirs) in April-May, 1985. The press in India and abroad gave many headlines to what was rightly regarded as an unprecedented event in the history of religion. It was the first time that a Pagan had questioned the character of a document hailed as the very Word of God by a People of the Book. The roles now stood reversed. So far it had been the privilege of the Peoples of the Book to ban and burn the sacred literature of the Pagans.”

Sita Ram Goel book The Calcutta Quran Petition

The Calcutta Quran Petition (1986)

God, People, Religion, History

“I have therefore thought that it would be a worthy and very useful thing to reduce the whole of this great art to a complete and orderly form of presentation, and then in different books to lay down and explain the required characteristics of different departments.”

Vitruvius book De architectura

Introduction, Sec. 1
De architectura (The Ten Books On Architecture) (~ 15BC), Book IV

Art

“I pressed play then came a long way from the Mac Book / I heard Raginder on “A. D. H. D.” then scribbled him down in my black book / Thinking one day he’d collaborate with a no name, named Marcus O / with one goal, sign Violinder so then he’ll call my imprint home.”

Marcus Orelias (1993) American actor, rapper, songwriter, author and entrepreneur

Beach Chair feat. Marcus Orelias Beach Chair https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Beach_Chair_(album) (2014)

Way, Home, Thinking

“Quote in Rembrandt's letter to Constantijn Huygens (Amsterdam, 12 January 1639) on 3 paintings commissioned (in 1635 and started by Rembrandt already in 1635/36) by the imperial court, as cited in Painters on Painting (1963) by Eric Protter, p. 78 / Dutch original text in The Rembrandt Documents, Walter Strauss & Marjon van der Meulen - Abaris Books, New York 1979, p. 161.”

Rembrandt van Rijn (1606–1669) Dutch 17th century painter and etcher

version in original Dutch (origineel citaat van Rembrandt, in Nederlands): Door die grooten lust ende geneegenheijt die ick gepleecght hebbe int wel wtvoeren van die twe/ stuckens die sijn Hoocheijt mijn heeft doen maeken weesende het een daer dat doode lichaem Chrisstij/ in den graeve gelecht werd ende dat ander/ daer Chrisstus van den doode opstaet dat met/ grooten verschrickinge des wachters. Dees selvij/ twe stuckens sijn door stuijdiose vlijt nu meede/ afgedaen soodat ick nu oock geneegen ben om die/ selvijge te leeveren om sijn Hoocheijt daer meede/ te vermaeken want deesen twe sijnt daer die meeste/ ende die naetuereelste beweechgelickheijt . in/ geopserveert is dat oock de grooste oorsaeck is dat/ die selvijge soo lang onder handen sij geweest. in margin: deessen 12 Januwarij 1639, Mijn heer ik woon op die binnenemster, thuijs is genaemt die suijckerbackerrij [in Amsterdam]. http://remdoc.huygens.knaw.nl/#/document/remdoc/e4458 What Rembrandt meant in his phrase "die meeste ende di naetuereelste beweechgelickheijt" has been the subject of dispute. Variant translations have been proposed: For in these two paintings "the greatest and most innate emotion has been expressed", which is also the main reason why they have taken so long to execute (c. 3 years!). The "deepest and most lifelike emotion has been expressed", and that's the reason they have taken so long to execute. 1630 - 1640

Quotes, Painting

“I'm proud to publish this book under my own name, though I don't fully understand the mechanics of its production or the nature of the personality I assume in delivering it. I had no conscious work to do on the book at all. I simply went into trance twice a week, spoke in a "mediumistic" capacity for Seth, or as Seth, and dictated the words to my husband, Robert Butts, who wrote them down.”

Jane Roberts (1929–1984) American Writer

Source: The Nature of Personal Reality (1974), p. ix

Understanding, Nature, Personality

“I wrote A Wrinkle in Time when we were living in a small dairy farm village in New England. I had three small children to raise, and life was not easy. We lost four of our closest friends within two years by death — that's a lot of death statistically. And I really wasn't finding the answers to my big questions in the logical places. So, at the time I discovered the world of particle physics. I discovered Einstein and relativity. I read a book of Einstein's, in which he said that anyone who's not lost in rapturous awe at the power and glory of the mind behind the universe is as good as a burnt-out candle. And I thought, "Oh, I've found my theologian, what a wonderful thing."”

Madeleine L'Engle (1918–2007) American writer

Penguins and Golden Calves (2003)

Life, Death, Children, World

“Our government should consider the internet as the most crucial matter. There should be wireless access to the internet all over Turkey and all kinds of restrictions on the internet should be abolished. Everyone should be able to log on to internet whenever they like. Putting a restriction on internet is something like putting a lock on a book and saying ; “you cannot read!””

Harun Yahya (1956) Turkish author

23 April 2013.
A9 TV addresses, 2013

Reading

“This isn't a diet book. In fact, you may gain 30 pounds just reading it.”

Morgan Murphy (food critic) (1972) Southern writer

Source: Off the Eaten Path: Second Helpings (2013), p. 7

Reading

“It's utterly incomprehensible to me how someone could say we don’t need a teaching authority of the Church. If we have five Bible scriptures and 18 opinions regarding them, who is to determine? Either it's the fact that My intellect is better than yours; I've studied more than you; I can persuade better than you can; I'm more passionate than you that makes my opinion win over yours. Or we have a teaching authority that says, The rule book says this is how you settle this issue.”

Ulf Ekman (1950) Swedish chaplain

Ulf Ekman Says Prophetic Word Confirmed His Catholic Conversion http://www.charismanews.com/world/43126-ulf-ekman-says-prophetic-word-confirmed-his-catholic-conversion Charisma News by Likas Berggren, 3/14/2014

Study, Passion

“All this takes many clumsy and inexact word-descriptions to describe, but if we read paintings like we read books, it would not be such a hidden language for painting can effortlessly produce such elegant solutions.”

Peter Greenaway (1942) British film director

Fear of Drowning By Numbers

Reading, Painting

“In 1978 when the book Living Systems was published, it contained the prediction that the sciences that were concerned with biological and social sciences would, in the future, be stated as rigorously as the “hard sciences” that study such nonliving phenomenon as temperature, distance, and the interaction of chemical elements. Principles of Quantitative Living Systems Science, the first of a planned series of three books, begins an attempt to fulfill that prediction…
It is our opinion that this book represents an important step in the development of a quantitative living systems science… As Simms shows, the concepts of available energy and the capacity to direct energy, as well as the causative relationship between information and behavior, are useful in the analysis of behavior…
The systems with which this first book of the series is concerned are mainly at the level of the cell and the animal organ and organism…. It will be interesting to see how the science is applied in later volumes to the complex behaviors of human being, and higher level systems.”

James Grier Miller (1916–2002) biologist

James G. and Jessie Miller (1999) Principles of Quantitative Living Systems Science. Foreword; As cited in: James R. Simms (2013) "Advances in living systems theory"

Behavior, Study, Science, Future

“The world of books is the most remarkable creation of man. Nothing else that he builds ever lasts. Monuments fall; nations perish; civilizations grow old and die out; and, after an era of darkness, new races build others. But in the world of books are volumes that have seen this happen again and again, and yet live on, still young, still as fresh as the day they were written, still telling men’s hearts of the hearts of men centuries dead.

And even the books that do not last long, penetrate their own times at least, sailing farther than Ulysses even dreamed of, like ships on the seas. It is the author’s part to call into being their cargoes and passengers,—living thoughts and rich bales of study and jeweled ideas. And as for the publishers, it is they who build the fleet, plan the voyage, and sail on, facing wreck, till they find every possible harbor that will value their burden.”

Clarence Day (1874–1935) American writer

The Story of the Yale University Press Told by a Friend (1920), pp. 7–8.

Men, World, Dreams, Idea

“For every age there is a popular idea about what madness is, what causes it, and how a mad person should look and behave; and it's usually these popular ideas, rather than those of medical professionals, that turn up in songs and stories and plays and books.”

Margaret Atwood (1939) Canadian writer

Ophelia Has a Lot to Answer For (1997)

Age, Idea, Personality, Madness

“Many people think they cannot have knowledge or understanding of God without reading books. But hearing is better than reading, and seeing is better than hearing. Hearing about Benares is different from reading about it; but seeing Benares is different from either hearing or reading.”

Ramakrishna (1836–1886) Indian mystic and religious preacher

Source: The Gospel of Sri Ramakrishna (1942), p. 863

God, People, Understanding, Knowledge

“The book begins with the clang of a cell door closing in a GPU prison. It ends with a shot in the back of the head in a murky passageway of the prison cellar. It moves with the speed, directness, precision and some of the impact of a bullet.”

Whittaker Chambers (1901–1961) Defected Communist spy

"Brightest in Dungeons," May 26, 1941
TIME magazine (1939-1948)

Speed

“I give all my printed books to Samuel Peach, son of Samuel Peach, in my Will named, and desire that this may be a codicil to my last Will and Testament, and taken as part thereof, as witness my hand, this third day of December. in the year of our Lord 1761.”

James Bradley (1693–1762) English astronomer; Astronomer Royal

Miscellaneous Works and Correspondence (1832), Memoirs of Mr. Bradley

Parting

“The Australia of her book is not merely a setting for cricket but a place of interest, of fun and of new impressions”

Margaret Hughes (1645–1719) British actress

John Arlott, review of The Long Hop; quoted in Times obituary http://www.timesonline.co.uk/tol/comment/obituaries/article516103.ece About

“They filmed it down in Wexford and I visited the set for about half an hour. I don't usually go near the set, because there's nothing for a writer to do there and you're constantly getting in the way. If I give a book to the movies, it's theirs. Writers often whinge about being betrayed by the movies – I have no sympathy for that. If you don't want a movie to be made, then don't sell your book to the movies.”

John Banville (1945) Irish writer

John Banville: Who cares whodunnit? (2013)

Way

“If you were to really hate and dislike a picture with all your heart, so that you could not bear to see or hear of it, how would you like it if someone insisted on getting to know and honor you through such a hated, horrible book? … And God says that he does not like any image which we make, and … that he hates and despises all who love images.”

Andreas Karlstadt (1486–1541) German theologian

Source: On the Removal of Images (1522), p. 109

Love, God, Hate, Heart

“The Bible is not a divine revelation from God. It is not inspired; on the contrary, it is a wicked book …. It has been responsible for more suffering and torture than any other volume ever printed……”

Joseph Lewis (1889–1968) American activist

Quoted from Talreja, K. M. (2000). Holy Vedas and holy Bible: A comparative study. New Delhi: Rashtriya Chetana Sangathan.

God, Suffering

“A third story, about a 12th century king Harsha of Kashmir, is apparently true but has nothing to do with religious persecution: he plundered Hindu temples of all sects including Buddhism, in his own kingdom, without bothering to desecrate them or their keepers apart from lucrative plunder. It is the one geunine case of a ruler plundering not out of religious motives but for the gold. There is no known case of a Muslim marauder who merely stole from temples without bothering to explicity desecrate them, much less of a Muslim ruler who plundered the sanctuaries of his own religion. Moreover, Kalhana's history book Rajatarangini relates this story with the comment: "Promoted by the Turks in his employ, he behaved like a Turk." This Harsha employed Turkish mercenaries (which his successors would regret, for they spied and ultimately grabbed power), and these Muslims already had a firm reputation of plundering temples with a good conscience.”

Harsha of Kashmir

Elst, Koenraad Negationism in India: concealing the record of Islam. 1992

Religion, History, Motivation

“Religion, it stops people from thinking because they think all the answers are in that one book; it impedes progress; it justifies crazy people. Flying planes into a building was a faith-based initiative.”

Bill Maher (1956) American stand-up comedian

I'm Swiss (2005)

People, Faith, Religion, Thinking

“We had some problems with the Howard newspaper strip, which led to problems with the Howard book, which ultimately led to the lawsuit. Marvel wouldn't pay the artist to draw it. Gene Colan and I were supposed to get a percentage of the syndicate's take for the strip. The problem was, the money came in 90 days, 120 days, six months — I don't remember how long exactly — after the strips were published. So, essentially, the artist was working for nothing up until that time, and no artist can afford to do that. [In comparison with Stan Lee and 's Spider-Man comic strip, ] Stan, as publisher of Marvel, had a regular salary coming in, and John Romita, I believe, was also on staff at the time. They didn't have quite the same problem.”

Steve Gerber (1947–2008) Comic writer

Comic Book Artist #7 (reprinted in Comic Book Artist Collection Volume 3 (TwoMorrows Publishing, 2005)): "Steve Gerber's Crazy Days", p. 66

Money, Problem, Time, Drawing

“Yes, a private investigator like my Wilbraham Rice. The public have taken very strongly to Wilbraham Rice. He bites his nails and eats a lot of bananas. I don’t know why I made him bite his nails to start with — it’s really rather disgusting — but there it is. He started by biting his nails, and now he has to do it in every single book. So monotonous.”

Agatha Christie book Death in the Clouds

Death in the Clouds (1935)

“If this “sacred” book teaches man to enslave his brother, it is not inspired. A god who would establish slavery is as cruel and heartless as any devil could be.”

Robert G. Ingersoll (1833–1899) Union United States Army officer

My Reviewers Reviewed (lecture from June 27, 1877, San Francisco, CA)

God

“[Elizabeth Moon's] antagonists are always evil moustache-twirlers. She could write a book about a golf open and the main rival to the hero would turn out to have clubs made from compressed kittens.”

James Nicoll (1961) Canadian fiction reviewer

[efprv2$bpa$1@reader1.panix.com, 2006]
2000s

Evil

“The reader will, I think, soon discover that I have tried to affirm the processes of his mental development and ripening of personality---something quite independent both of the self-idolatries of the mass and of those primitive emotional fixations and stereotypes whose antiquated symbolisms linger on under the terminology of religion. If there is anything affirmative in the assertion of the meaning of spiritual maturity in the modern world, then I may hope that the effort of this book will be regarded as constructive.”

Everett Dean Martin (1880–1941)

Source: Civilizing Ourselves: Intellectual Maturity in the Modern World (1932), p. xi, Foreword

World, Religion, Hope, Thinking

“The purpose of this book is to show how economic analysis can be used in formulating business policies. It is therefore a departure from the main stream of economic writings on the theory of the firm, much of which is too simple in its assumptions and too complicated in its logical development to be managerially useful. The big gap between the problems of logic that intrigue economic theorists and the problems of policy that plague practical management needs to be bridged in order to give executives access to the practical contributions that economic thinking can make to top-management policies.”

Joel Dean (1906–1979) American economics wrtier

Preface
Managerial Economics, 1951

Departure, Business, Problem, Thinking

“"When I published my book "The Origins of the Bulgarians" in 1907, from which it came out that the Bulgarians were something better than what was being thought of for them, I was declared a patriot and, therefore, which is outside the law. Everyone who criticized me has criticized me not in content, not because the data I have stated is untrue, but because I was a patriot who reported facts that the Bulgarians were both valiant and cultural when, in the opinion of my opponents, it was obvious that the Bulgarians were created by nature as a fertilizer on foreign fields … My chauvinism, proving that Thrace and Macedonia were old Bulgarian lands, threatened on the one hand Russia, which aspired to South Thrace as a hinterland of the Dardanelles and on the other hand - Pannonian Slavs who aspired to Thessaloniki. The opinion of Paninese Slavs was also supported by Bulgarian scientists.”

Gancho Tsenov (1870–1949) Bulgarian historian

Law, Support, Nature

“Which reminds me of the man I read of in some sacred book who was given a choice of what he most desired. And because he didn't ask for titles and honours and dignities, but only for immense wealth, these other things came to him also."
"I am sure you didn't read about him in any sacred book."
"Yes; I fancy you will find him in Debrett.”

Saki (1870–1916) British writer

"Reginald at the Theatre"
Reginald (1904)

Reading, Wealth

“An unbiased reader, on opening one of their [Fichte’s, Schelling’s or Hegel’s] books and then asking himself whether this is the tone of a thinker wanting to instruct or that of a charlatan wanting to impress, cannot be five minutes in any doubt. … The tone of calm investigation, which had characterized all previous philosophy, is exchanged for that of unshakeable certainty, such as is peculiar to charlatanry of every kind and at all times. … From every page and every line, there speaks an endeavor to beguile and deceive the reader, first by producing an effect to dumbfound him, then by incomprehensible phrases and even sheer nonsense to stun and stupefy him, and again by audacity of assertion to puzzle him, in short, to throw dust in his eyes and mystify him as much as possible.”

Arthur Schopenhauer book Parerga and Paralipomena

E. Payne, trans. (1974) Vol. 1, p. 23
Parerga and Paralipomena (1851), Sketch of a History of the Doctrine of the Ideal and the Real

Time

“Well, if I were thus rationed in this article and could have but one adjective for George Gershwin, that adjective would be "ingenuous." Ingenuous at and about his piano. Once an occasional composer named Oscar Levant stood beside that piano while those sure, sinewy, catlike Gershwin fingers beat their brilliant drum-fire—the tumultuous cascade of the "Rhapsody In Blue," the amorous languor of "The Man I Love," the impish glee of "Fascinating Rhythm," the fine, jaunty, dust-spurning scorn of "Strike Up the Band." If the performer was familiar with the work of any other composer, he gave no evidence of it. Levant (who, by the way, makes a fleeting appearance in the new Dashlell Hammett book, under the guise of Levi Oscant) could be heard mutterIng under his breath, "An evening with Gershwin Is a Gershwln evening."
"I wonder," said our young composer dreamily, "if my music will be played a hundred years from now."
"It certainly will be," said the bitter Levant,"if you are still around."”

Alexander Woollcott (1887–1943) American critic

"George the Ingenuous" in Cosmopolitan (November 1933); reprinted in Ch. IV: "'...A Young Colossus...'" https://books.google.com/books?id=ATcjgQTx0uIC&pg=PA45#v=onepage&q&f=false from Gershwin Remembered (1992) by Edward Jablonski, pp. 44-45

Love, Music, Way, Appearance

“They [the Beatles] came backstage after one of my lectures, and they said to me: 'Even from an early age we have been seeking a highly spiritual existence. We tried drugs and that didn't work.' They are such practical and intelligent young boys that it took them only two days to find that Transcendental Meditation is the answer.
:Quoted from, Beatles Anthology, by The Beatles, Chronicle Books, 2000, page 261”

Maharishi Mahesh Yogi (1917–2008) Inventor of Transcendental Meditation, musician

Age, Quotes, Intelligence, Boy

“Your lesson plan is excellent — except for the Emily Dickinson line: "There is no frigate like a book." The sentiment is lovely, the quotation is apt — only trouble is the word "frigate." Just try to say it in class — and your lesson is over.”

Bel Kaufmanová book Up the Down Staircase

Part III, ch. 18 (Bea Schacter)
Up the Down Staircase (1965)

Love

“Three imaginary readers looked over my shoulder while I was writing, and I now dedicate the book to them. […] First the general reader, the layman […] second the expert [and] third the student.”

Richard Dawkins book The Selfish Gene

Preface
The Selfish Gene (1976, 1989)

“Whilst the misguided Follower climbs with Pain,
Mountains of Whimsies, heapt in his own Brain,
Stumbling from Thought to Thought, falls headlong down
Into Doubt’s boundless Sea, where like to drown,
Books bear him up a-while, and make him try
To swim with Bladders of Philosophy.”

John Wilmot, 2nd Earl of Rochester (1647–1680) English poet, and peer of the realm

ll. 16–21.
A Satire Against Mankind (1679)

Pain, Mountain, Sea

“The Bible is a book of faith, and a book of doctrine, and a book of morals, and a book of religion, of especial revelation from God.”

Daniel Webster (1782–1852) Leading American senator and statesman. January 18, 1782 – October 24, 1852. Served as the Secretary of Sta…

Source: On the Completion of the Bunker Hill Monument (1843), p. 102

God, Faith, Religion

“Nothing Like the Sun and the Enderby books prove that Burgess is as clever as he seems. His utopian satires, of which 1985 is yet another, mainly just seem clever. At a generous estimate there are half a dozen ideas in each of them.”

Clive James (1939–2019) Australian author, critic, broadcaster, poet, translator and memoirist

'Anthony Burgess in 1978'
Essays and reviews, From the Land of Shadows (1982)

Idea, Sun

“Digressions, incontestably, are the sunshine; —& they are the life, the soul of reading; — take them out of this book for instance, — you might as well take the book along with them.”

Laurence Sterne book The Life and Opinions of Tristram Shandy, Gentleman

Book I, Ch. 22.
The Life and Opinions of Tristram Shandy, Gentleman (1760-1767)

Life, Soul, Reading

“Indeed, most of what is in history books is stark, raving mad —the maddest of all being the historian's belief that it is sane. For some time now, I often cry when I watch the evening news, read newspapers, or study history books, a reaction I was trained to suppress in every school I attended for 25 years. In fact, it is because we so often switch into our social alters when we try to study history that we cannot understand it —our real emotions are dissociated. Those who are able to remain outside the social trance are the individuals whose personal insights are beyond those of their neighbors.”

Lloyd deMause (1931) American thinker

Source: The Emotional Life of Nations (2002), Ch. 5, pp. 108-109.

School, History, Understanding, Study

“It was not possible for him to visit his library as often as he wished, for the calls made upon him by the endless ceremonials which were his exacting duty to perform robbed him for many hours each day of his only pleasure—books.”

Mervyn Peake book Titus Groan

Source: Titus Groan (1946), Chapter 29 “The Library” (p. 158)

Pleasure

“No book can teach you about yourself, no psychologist, none of the professors or philosophers. What they can teach you is what they think you are or what they think you should be.”

Jiddu Krishnamurti (1895–1986) Indian spiritual philosopher

1st Public Talk, Bangalore, India (30 January 1971)
1970s

Thinking

“At its heart, this book is about where this new left has come from, and where it might be going.”

David McNally (1953) Canadian political scientist

Preface, p. 11
Another World Is Possible : Globalization and Anti-capitalism (2002)

Heart

“And fighting the battle of life is fighting against fearful odds, too. There are giants and dragons in this nineteenth century, and the golden casket that they guard is not so easy to win as it appears in the story-books.”

Jerome K. Jerome book Idle Thoughts of an Idle Fellow

Idle Thoughts of an Idle Fellow (1886)

Life, Fear, Appearance, Fight

“It would be foolhardy to swell the pages of this book with an exhaustive list of Greco-Hebrew differences. Everyone knows that Homer is very different from the Bible.”

Cyrus H. Gordon (1908–2001) American linguist

Introduction
The Common Background of Greek and Hebrew Civilizations (1965 [1962])

“This is, after all, a book about reading, and the kind of reader I am addressing does not care primarily about being in fashion.”

Robertson Davies book A Voice from the Attic

A Voice from the Attic (1960)

Fashion, Reading

“Examining the world in order to find consolation is very much like looking carefully over the pages of a great book in order to find our own name. … Whether we find what we want or not, our preoccupation has hindered us from a true knowledge of the contents.”

George Eliot book Impressions of Theophrastus Such

Part 1
Impressions of Theophrastus Such (1879)

World, Knowledge

“Books must follow sciences, and not sciences books.”

Francis Bacon (1561–1626) English philosopher, statesman, scientist, jurist, and author

Proposition touching Amendment of Laws
Resuscitatio (1657)

Science

“I was going to do a book about the first prearranged Karpov-Kasparov match, '84-'85. But the God-damn Jews have stolen my entire file on that.”

Bobby Fischer (1943–2008) American chess prodigy, chess player, and chess writer

Radio Interview, January 27 2002 http://www.geocities.jp/bobbby_b/mp3/F_20_1.MP3 2000s

God

“This book reports the findings from a study of job motivation based on a fresh approach to this problem. It is an important study, since the analyses and interpretations of the authors suggest that a breakthrough may well have been made to provide new insights into the nature and method of operation of job attitudes.”

Frederick Herzberg (1923–2000) American psychologist

Source: The motivation to work, 1959, p.vii: Preface ; lead paragraph

Motivation, Nature, Problem, Study

“Why tear off a single page when you can throw away the book?”

Aaron Weiss

Torches Together.
Catch For Us The Foxes (2004)

Tear

“Yesterday's kook book becomes tomorrow's standard text.”

Northrop Frye (1912–1991) Canadian literary critic and literary theorist

2:495
"Quotes", Late Notebooks, 1982–1990: Architecture of the Spiritual World (2002)

“Good morning. This coming week I will be making the trip up Pennsylvania Avenue to address a joint session of Congress. We have some business to attend to called the budget of the United States. The federal budget is a document about the size of a big city phone book, and about as hard to read from cover to cover. The blueprint I submit this week contains many numbers, but there is one that probably counts more than any other – $5.6 trillion. That is the surplus the federal government expects to collect over the next 10 years; money left over after we have met our obligations to Social Security, Medicare, health care, education, defense and other priorities. The plan I submit will fund our highest national priorities. Education gets the biggest percentage increase of any department in our federal government. We won't just spend more money on schools and education, we will spend it responsibly. We'll give states more freedom to decide what works. And as we give more to our schools we're going to expect more in return by requiring states and local jurisdictions to test every year. How else can we know whether schools are teaching and children are learning? Social Security and Medicare will get every dollar they need to meet their commitments. And every dollar of Social Security and Medicare tax revenue will be reserved for Social Security and Medicare.”

George W. Bush (1946) 43rd President of the United States

2000s, 2001, Radio Address to the Nation (February 2001)

Money, Children, Health, Education

“This is a common criticism: the idea that the atheist is guilty of a literalist reading of scripture, and that it’s a very naive way of approaching religion, and there’s a far more sophisticated and nuanced view of religion on offer and the atheist is disregarding that. A few problems with this: anyone making that argument is failing to acknowledge just how many people really do approach these texts literally or functionally - whether they’re selective literalists, or literal all the way down the line. There are certain passages in scripture that just cannot be read figuratively. And people really do live by the lights of what is literally laid out in these books. So, the Koran says “hate the infidel” and Muslims hate the infidel because the Koran spells it out ad nauseam. Now, it’s true that you can cherry-pick scripture, and you can look for all the good parts. You can ignore where it says in Leviticus that if a woman is not a virgin on her wedding night you’re supposed to stone her to death on her father’s doorstep. Most religious people ignore those passages, which really can only be read literally, and say that “they were only appropriate for the time” and “they don’t apply now”. And likewise, Muslims try to have the same reading of passages that advocate holy war. They say “well, these were appropriate to those battles that Mohammed was fighting, but now we don’t have to fight those battles”. This is all a good thing, but we should recognize what’s happening here: people are feeling pressure from a host of all-too-human concerns that have nothing, in principle, to do with God: secularism, and human rights, and democracy, and scientific progress. These have made certain passages in scripture untenable. This is coming from outside religion, and religion is now making a great show of its sophistication in grappling with these pressures. This is an example of religion losing the argument with modernity.”

Sam Harris (1967) American author, philosopher and neuroscientist

Sam Harris in interview by Big Think (04/07/2007) http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=8zV3vIXZ-1Y&t=6s 2000s

Death, God, Hate, War

“A word in the head is worth two in the book.”

Anu Garg (1967) Indian author

A.Word.A.Day (May 7, 2007) http://wordsmith.org/words/stormy_petrel.html

“Between going and staying the day wavers,
in love with its own transparency.
The circular afternoon is now a bay
where the world in stillness rocks.
All is visible and all elusive,
all is near and can't be touched.
Paper, book, pencil, glass,
rest in the shade of their names.
Time throbbing in my temples repeats
the same unchanging syllable of blood.
The light turns the indifferent wall
into a ghostly theater of reflections.
I find myself in the middle of an eye,
watching myself in its blank stare.
The moment scatters. Motionless,
I stay and go: I am a pause.”

Octavio Paz (1914–1998) Mexican writer laureated with the 1990 Nobel Prize for Literature

Between Going and Staying

Love, World, Light, Time

“To limit the press is to insult a nation; to prohibit reading of certain books is to declare the inhabitants to be either fools or slaves: such a prohibition ought to fill them with disdain.”

Claude Adrien Helvétius (1715–1771) French philosopher

A Treatise on Man: His Intellectual Faculties & His Education, Vol. I (1773)

Fools, Reading

“All nonsense. Nobody knows the real Göring. I am a man of many parts, but the autobiography, what does that tell you? Nothing. And those books put out by the party press, they are less than useless.”

Hermann Göring (1893–1946) German politician and military leader

To Leon Goldensohn (27 May 1946)
The Nuremberg Interviews (2004)

Parting

“As in the case of the individual, not all the information which is available to the race at one time is accessible without special effort. There is a well-known tendency of libraries to become clogged by their own volume; of the sciences to develop such a degree of specialization that the expert is often illiterate outside his own minute specialty. Dr. Vannevar Bush has suggested the use of mechanical aids for the searching through vast bodies of material. These probably have their uses, but they are limited by the impossibility of classifying a book under an unfamiliar heading unless some particular person has already recognized the relevance of that heading for that particular book. In the case where two subjects have the same technique and intellectual content but belong to widely separated fields, this still requires some individual with an almost Leibnizian catholicity of interest.”

Norbert Wiener book Cybernetics: Or Control and Communication in the Animal and the Machine

VIII. Information, Language, and Society. p. 158.
Cybernetics: Or Control and Communication in the Animal and the Machine (1948)

Search, Effort, Science, Time

“David Dimbleby: You couldn't - you couldn't set our minds at rest on the vexed question of what the Sunday Times did actually pay you for the book?
Harold Wilson: No, I don't think it's a matter of interest to the BBC or to anybody else.
Dimbleby: But why..
Wilson: If you're interested in these things, you'd better find out how people buy yachts. Do you ask that question? Did you ask him how he was able to pay for a yacht?
Dimbleby: I haven't interviewed …
Wilson: Have you asked him that question?
Dimbleby: I haven't interviewed him.
Wilson: Well, has the BBC ever asked that question?
Dimbleby: I don't know …
Wilson: Well, what's it got to do with you, then?
Dimbleby: I imagine they have..
Wilson: Why you ask these question, I mean why, if people can afford to buy £25,000 yachts, do the BBC not regard that as a matter for public interest? Why do you insult me with these questions here?
Dimbleby: It's only that it's been a matter of..
Wilson: All I'm saying, all I'm saying..
Dimbleby: … public speculation, and I was giving you an opportunity if you wanted to, to say something about it.
Wilson: It was not a matter of speculation, it was just repeating press gossip. You will not put this question to Mr. Heath. When you have got an answer to him, come and put the question to me. And this last question and answer are not to be recorded. Is this question being recorded?
Dimbleby: Well it is, because we're running film.
Wilson: Well, will you cut it out or not? All right, we stop now. No, I'm sorry, I'm really not having this. I'm really not having this. The press may take this view, that they wouldn't put this question to Heath but they put it to me; if the BBC put this question to me, without putting it to Heath, the interview is off, and the whole programme is off. I think it's a ridiculous question to put. Yes, and I mean it cut off, I don't want to read in the Times Diary or miscellany that I asked for it to be cut out. [pause]
Dimbleby: All right, are we still running? Can I ask you this, then, which I mean, I.. let me put this question, I mean if you find this question offensive then..
Wilson: Coming to ask if your curiosity can be satisfied, I think it's disgraceful. Never had such a question in an interview in my life before.
Dimbleby: I.. [gasps]
Joe Haines (Wilson's Press Secretary): Well, let's stop now, and we can talk about it, shall we?
Dimbleby: No, let's.. well, I mean, we'll keep going, I think, don't you?
Wilson: No, I think we'll have a new piece of film in and start all over again. But if this film is used, or this is leaked, then there's going to be a hell of a row. And this must be..
Dimbleby: Well, I certainly wouldn't leak it..
Wilson: You may not leak it but these things do leak. I've never been to Lime Grove without it leaking.”

Harold Wilson (1916–1995) Former Prime Minister of the United Kingdom

Exchange with BBC interviewer David Dimbleby recorded for a documentary called "Yesterday's Men" broadcast on 16 June 1971. The BBC did agree not to show this portion of the interview, but Wilson's fears of a leak were justified as a transcript was published on page 1 of The Times on June 18, 1971. A fuller transcript appeared in Private Eye during 1972.
Leader of the Opposition

Life, People, Imagination, Hell

“I agree. When I hear a player talking about how he "needs" to know about all the other details, I hear a player who is being adversarial to the GM and simply not trusting him to "get it right." Players like that make baby seals die and cause cancer with prolonged exposure. I don't write books for them.”

Sean Punch (1967) Canadian editor

Steve Jackson Games Forums http://forums.sjgames.com

Baby

“There’s no way to please everyone, because that mythical book with the ending that every single person wants can’t exist—you want different things, each one of you. The only thing I can do, in light of that fact, is write an honest story as best I can.”

Veronica Roth (1988) American author

About the End of Allegiant (SPOILERS), Roth, Veronica, Veronica Roth, October 28, 2013, November 3, 2013 http://veronicarothbooks.blogspot.com/2013/10/about-end-of-allegiant-spoilers.html, Quoted at: Veronica Roth offers huge explanation for 'Allegiant's' big twist – will it appease you?, Sims, Andrew, Hypable, October 28, 2013, November 6, 2013 http://www.hypable.com/2013/10/28/allegiant-review-tris-dies-veronica-roth-response/,

Way, Light, Personality

“Hebrews. This book is much superior to most of the writings attributed to St. Paul, though passages in the other books are very admirable.”

James Fenimore Cooper (1789–1851) American author

Journal kept by Cooper from January to May 1848
Correspondence of James Fenimore-Cooper (1922)

“Its fine if the law bans books because government won't really enforce it.”

Elena Kagan (1960) Associate Justice of the Supreme Court of the United States

Widely reported as having been said by Kagan during the Supreme Court oral argument in the Citizens United case in September, 2009; however, this quote does not appear in the actual transcript of the oral argument http://www.supremecourt.gov/oral_arguments/argument_transcripts/08-205&#x5B;Reargued&#x5D;.pdf. Misattributed

Law

“Regarding my childhood, my grandmother could play by ear and she loved to hear me practice and would say after every piece, "That was pretty. Play that one again." She was a booster. I had two women piano teachers who encouraged me to compose--Margie Murphy and Helen Lipscomb. Helen was also a composer and we used part of my lessons for composition.
When I was in high school, I read John Cage's books and fell in love with the ideas and the excitement of the avant garde. My music, as a result, moved over to what has been called post-Cagian, non-academic. That lasted until about 1979 at which point I changed. My music is now quite lyrical, sometimes called neo-Romantic, and full of cut-ups/collage of newly composed materials. Since 1985 I have been composing mostly swales for various instrumental combinations.
A swale is a meadow or a marsh where there is nourishment and moisture and therefore, a rich diversity of plant life. My work, since 1984, has been made from swatches (of newly composed music, rather than found music) which are reminiscent of this diversity…”

Beth Anderson (1950) American neo-romantic composer

Anderson (1996-2011) "Beth Anderson, Composer, Miscellany From The Dark Past" at beand.com http://www.beand.com/, Last Updated January 3, 2011

Love, Life, Women, School

“Although size and book to market equity seem like ad hoc variables for explaining average stock returns, we have reason to expect that they proxy for common risk factors in returns.”

Eugene Fama (1939) American economist and Nobel laureate in Economics

Source: Common risk factors in the returns on stocks and bonds, 1993, p. 7

“I was attending the American Society of Animal Science meetings when the flood occurred. I first learned about it when I read about it on the front page of USA Today, a national newspaper. I grieved for the "dead" books, the same way most people grieve for a dead relative. The destruction of books upset me because "thoughts died." Even though most of the books are still in other libraries, there are many people at the (Colorado State) university who will never read them. To me, Shakespeare lives if we keep performing his plays. He dies, when we stop performing them. I am my work. If the livestock industry continues to use equipment I have designed, then my "thoughts live" and my life has meaning. If my efforts to improve the treatment of cattle and pigs make real improvements in the world, then life is meaningful.”

Temple Grandin (1947) USA-american doctor of animal science, author, and autism activist

Life, People, World, Way

“The Book of Daniel is especially fitted to be a battle-ground between faith and unbelief. It admits of no half-way measures. It is either divine or an imposture. The writer, were he not Daniel, must have lied on a most frightful scale.”

Edward Bouverie Pusey (1800–1882) British saint

Daniel the Prophet (1865)

Faith, Way

“Books are published with an expectation, if not a desire, that they will be criticised in reviews, and if deemed valuable that parts of them will be used as affording illustrations by way of quotation, or the like, and if the quantity taken be neither substantial nor material, if, as it has been expressed by some Judges, "a fair use" only be made of the publication, no wrong is done and no action can be brought.”

William Wood, 1st Baron Hatherley (1801–1881) Lord Chancellor of Great Britain

Chatterton v. Cave (1877), L. R. 3 App. Cas. 492.

Way, Parting

“During my high school years, a boy from my neighborhood named Malcolm chose me to be his friend for a season. His elbow nudged my book in the public library one Saturday afternoon as he sprawled forward across the table feigning some condition—boredom, I suppose. His voice was like shadow—as whispery and as indistinct as shadow, due to an adolescent change. “Do you want to wrestle?” he asked. I have never met anyone since who speaks as Malcolm spoke: He daydreamed; he pronounced strategies out loud (as I raked elm leaves from our lawn and piled them in the curb)—about how he would befriend this boy or that boy, never anyone I knew; Malcolm went to a different high school. “First,” he said, “I will tease him about his freckles. Then I will tease him about his laugh—how his laugh sounds a little like a whinny sometimes. I won’t go too far. You should see how his wrist pivots as he dribbles down the court. “He’s got these little curls above his sideburns. I wish I had those.””

Richard Rodríguez (1944) American journalist and essayist

(He would catch me up on the way to the library.) “What are you reading? We read that last year. Not really a war story, though, is it? Want to go eat French toast?”
Darling: A Spiritual Autobiography (2013)

War, School, Way, Boy

“I hope that the reader will not regard the contents of this book as an escape from the present world but rather as a key part of it.”

Cyrus H. Gordon (1908–2001) American linguist

Introduction
Adventures in the Nearest East (1957)

World, Hope, Parting

“I opened the door, and there he stood, a telegraph boy. I signed for the telegram, sat on the bed, and wondered if the wine had finally got the Old Man's heart. The telegram said: your book accepted mailing contract today. Hackmuth. That was all. I let the paper float to the carpet. I just sat there. Then I got down on the floor and began kissing the telegram. I crawled under the bed and just lay there. I did not need the sunshine anymore. Nor the earth, nor heaven. I just lay there, happy to die. Nothing else could happen to me. My life was over.”

John Fante book Ask the Dust

Ask the Dust (1939)

Life, Boy, Kiss, Wine

“The content of a book holds the power of education and it is with this power that we can shape our future and change lives.”

Malala Yousafzai (1997) Pakistani children's education activist

Inauguration of Library of Birmingham, Jan 2013

Education, Change, Future

“With books, as with companions, it is of more consequence to know which to avoid, than which to choose; for good books are as scarce as good companions.”

Charles Caleb Colton (1777–1832) British priest and writer

Preface
Lacon (1820)

“This, then, is the new illiteracy, the illiteracy of those who can read but don't. […] This new illiteracy is more pernicious than the old, because unlike the old illiteracy it does not debar its victims from power and influence, although like the old illiteracy it disqualifies them for it. Those long-dead men and women who learned to read so that they might read the Bible and John Bunyan would tell us that pride is the greatest of all sins, the father of sin. And the victims of the new illiteracy are proud of it. If you don't believe me, talk to them and see with what pride they trumpet their utter ignorance of any book you care to name.”

Gene Wolfe (1931–2019) American science fiction and fantasy writer

"From a house on the Borderland", Horrorstruck (1987), Reprinted in Gene Wolfe, Castle of Days (1992)
Nonfiction

Women, Men, Learning, Reading

“The publication of the book, Corporate Strategy, by H. Igor Ansoff was a major event in the 1965 world of management. As early as it came in this literature, the book represented a kind of crescendo in the development of strategic planning theory, offering a degree of elaboration seldom attempted since.”

Igor Ansoff (1918–2001) American mathematician

Henry Mintzberg (1994), The Rise and Fall of Strategic Planning, Prentice Hall, Hemel Hempstead. p. 43

World, Literature

“There was an Indian edition of most of my books, but it didn't make much of a splash.”

Wendy Doniger (1940) American Indologist

On the impact of her books in India. But her publication of The Hindus: An Alternative History, a sweeping history of Hinduism from its origins in 2500 B.C. to the present, though a success, it has been controversial (this aspect has been covered in another quote above).
Q&A with Wendy Doniger, the Mircea Eliade Distinguished Service Professor and author of The Hindus

“An ignorant man believes that the whole universe only exists for him: as if nothing else required any consideration. If, therefore, anything happens to him contrary to his expectation, he at once concludes that the whole universe is evil. If, however, he would take into consideration the whole universe, form an idea of it, and comprehend what a small portion he is of the Universe, he will find the truth. There are many… passages in the books of the prophets expressing the same idea.”

Maimónides book The Guide for the Perplexed

Maimonides provides examples here from (Ps. cxliv. 4), (Job xxv. 6 & iv. 19) and (Isa. xl. 15).
Source: Guide for the Perplexed (c. 1190), Part III, Ch.12

Truth, Idea, Universe, Evil

Quotes about books page 40

Quotes about books
page 40