Without libraries what have we? We have no past and no future.

Science has explained nothing; the more we know the more fantastic the world becomes and the profounder the surrounding darkness.

The best way to predict the future is to study the past, or prognosticate.

It is a fine thing to be honest, but it is also very important to be right.

The wisdom of the wise and the experience of the ages are perpetuated by quotations.

You don’t have to burn books to destroy a culture. Just get people to stop reading them.

When digital technology started becoming the norm, you’ve got 50, 60, 70 years of recordings on tapes that are just deteriorating. Like, a two-inch reel of recording tape won’t last forever. It dissolves. It will disappear.

Good men by nature, wish to know. I know that many will call this useless work… men who desire nothing but material riches and are absolutely devoid of that of wisdom, which is the food and only true riches of the mind.

The endeavor to understand is the first and only basis of virtue.

A people do not throw their geniuses away. And if they are thrown away, it is our duty as artists and as witnesses for the future to collect them again for the sake of our children and, if necessary, bone by bone.

Suppose that we are wise enough to learn and know – and yet not wise enough to control our learning and knowledge, so that we use it to destroy ourselves? Even if that is so, knowledge remains better than ignorance.

Imagination is everything. It is the preview of life’s coming attractions.

The mind is never satisfied with the objects immediately before it, but is always breaking away from the present moment, and losing itself in schemes of future felicity… The natural flights of the human mind are not from pleasure to pleasure, but from hope to hope.

Our generation in the west was lucky: we had readymade gateways. We had books, paper, teachers, schools and libraries. But many in the world lack these luxuries. How do you practice without such tryout venues?

Why should I care about posterity? What’s posterity ever done for me?

Science investigates; religion interprets. Science gives man knowledge which is power; religion gives man wisdom which is control.

Which painting in the National Gallery would I save if there was a fire? The one nearest the door of course.

It is beyond a doubt that all our knowledge begins with experience.

Without forgiveness, there’s no future.

The value of beauty and inspiration is very much underrated, no question. But I want to be clear: I’m not trying to be anyone’s savior. I’m just trying to think about the future and not be sad.

While some doubted that connecting the world was actually important, we were building. While others doubted that this would be sustainable, you were forming lasting connections. We just cared more about connecting the world than anyone else. And we still do today.

Someday I want to have children and give them all the love I never had.

The man who reads nothing at all is better educated than the man who reads nothing but newspapers.

This generation of Americans has a rendezvous with destiny.

Access to the Vedas is the greatest privilege this century may claim over all previous centuries.

Education is the period during which you are being instructed by somebody you do not know, about something you do not want to know.

We know the truth, not only by the reason, but also by the heart.

The direction in which education starts a man will determine his future in life.

Seeing much, suffering much, and studying much, are the three pillars of learning.

We know accurately only when we know little, with knowledge doubt increases.

Through Kurt I saw the beauty of minimalism and the importance of music that’s stripped down.

The more extensive a man’s knowledge of what has been done, the greater will be his power of knowing what to do.

The advancement and diffusion of knowledge is the only guardian of true liberty.

When you create circumstances together, when you try everything, then you can lose. But you need to show the importance.

It is only in our decisions that we are important.

Leave it as it is. The ages have been at work on it and man can only mar it.

For 25 years countless people have come to the U.N. climate conferences begging our world leaders to stop emissions and clearly that has not worked as emissions are continuing to rise. So I will not beg the world leaders to care for our future. I will instead let them know change is coming whether they like it or not.

Once you get a spice in your home, you have it forever. Women never throw out spices. The Egyptians were buried with their spices. I know which one I’m taking with me when I go.

Most ignorance is vincible ignorance. We don’t know because we don’t want to know.

How many things there are concerning which we might well deliberate whether we had better know them.

Much learning does not teach understanding.

This self-love is the instrument of our preservation; it resembles the provision for the perpetuity of mankind: it is necessary, it is dear to us, it gives us pleasure, and we must conceal it.

How do you know what it’s like to be stupid if you’ve never been smart?

The word ‚belief‘ is a difficult thing for me. I don’t believe. I must have a reason for a certain hypothesis. Either I know a thing, and then I know it – I don’t need to believe it.

When you know a thing, to hold that you know it, and when you do not know a thing, to allow that you do not know it – this is knowledge.

America is not nearly done. We’re only in the beginning. Who knows who we will be? Who knows… what color we will be? It is all something that, maybe, our descendants – if they survive that long – will see.

Education is simply the soul of a society as it passes from one generation to another.

Someday, the capitalist system will disappear in the United States, because no social class system has been eternal. One day, class societies will disappear.

Read about history, and you become aware that nothing starts with us.

Knowledge of the past and of the places of the earth is the ornament and food of the mind of man.

Knowledge is of two kinds. We know a subject ourselves, or we know where we can find information upon it.

It is natural to want to have a future.

Genius creates, and taste preserves. Taste is the good sense of genius; without taste, genius is only sublime folly.

It is better, of course, to know useless things than to know nothing.

When I arrived in Laos and found young Americans living there, out of free choice, I was surprised. After only a week, I began to have a sense of the appeal of the country and its people – along with despair about its future.

Official dignity tends to increase in inverse ratio to the importance of the country in which the office is held.

Words do two major things: They provide food for the mind and create light for understanding and awareness.

Nothing in all the world is more dangerous than sincere ignorance and conscientious stupidity.

What do we, as a nation, care about books? How much do you think we spend altogether on our libraries, public or private, as compared with what we spend on our horses?

Memories are the key not to the past, but to the future.

Man, the living creature, the creating individual, is always more important than any established style or system.