“A library is a different kind of social reality (of the three dimensional kind), which by its very existence teaches a system of values beyond the fiscal.”

“The most agonising thing is to drop doubt into a man about his being a reality, three-dimensional - and not some other kind of reality.”

“To put it kindly, I am a very talkative, social person. To put it less kindly, I’m a flibbertigibbet, which is what my frenemy Rainn Wilson calls me.”

“There must be every kind of books in your library. The most beautiful gardens are those with many different flowers, with all kinds of herbs and weeds!”

“There is only one kind of wisdom that has any social value, and that is the knowledge of one's own limitations.”

“To fail to try to understand the world from the point of view of the lion or the bat is to admit that the human existence is so limited that it cannot project itself satisfactorily into the minds of different creatures. Do we really want to accept this limitation when we quite satisfactorily project ourselves into all sorts of invented imaginary creatures, even those with very different sensory systems and value systems than our own? All one need do is to read a few comic books to conclude that the projection abilities of our species are great indeed and that our children, at least, have little difficulty in going beyond their ordinary frameworks of reality.”