The magic is only in what books say, how they stitched the patches of the universe together into one garment for us.
If you don't want a man unhappy politically, don't give him two sides to a question to worry him; give him one. Better yet, give him none.
You don't have to burn books to destroy a culture. Just get people to stop reading them.
The books are to remind us what asses and fools we are.
Those who don't build must burn.
I just want someone to hear what I have to say. And maybe if I talk long enough, it’ll make sense.
Out of the nursery into the college and back into the nursery; there’s your intellectual pattern for the past five centuries or more.
Everyone must leave something behind when he dies, my grandfather said. A child or a book or a painting or a house or a wall built or a pair of shoes made. Or a garden planted. Something your hand touched some way so your soul has somewhere to go when you die, and when people look at that tree or that flower you planted, you're there.
Do your own bit of saving, and if you drown, at least die knowing you were headed for shore.
There must be something in books, something we can’t imagine, to make a woman stay in a burning house; there must be something there. You don’t stay for nothing.
With school turning out more runners, jumpers, racers, tinkerers, grabbers, snatchers, fliers, and swimmers instead of examiners, critics, knowers, and imaginative creators, the word 'intellectual,' of course, became the swear word it deserved to be.
Don't ask for guarantees. And don't look to be saved in any one thing, person, machine, or library. Do your own bit of saving, and if you drown, at least die knowing you were heading for shore.
A book is a loaded gun in the house next door...Who knows who might be the target of the well-read man?
The sun burnt every day. It burnt time.
We have everything we need to be happy, but we aren't happy. Something's missing.
Remember, the firemen are rarely necessary. The public itself stopped reading of its own accord.
Is it true, the world works hard and we play? Is that why we're hated so much?
That's the wonderful thing about man; he never gets so discouraged or disgusted that he gives up doing it all over again, because he knows very well it is important and WORTH the doing.
Do you ever read any of the books you burn?" He laughed. "That's against the law!" "Oh. Of course.
Most of us can't rush around, talk to everyone, know all the cities of the world, we haven't time, money or that many friends. The things you're looking for... are in the world, but the only way the average chap will ever see ninety-nine per cent of them is in a book.
or simply:
