The past is strapped to our backs. We do not have to see it; we can always feel it. People gather bundles of sticks to build bridges they never cross. People in distress will sometimes prefer a problem that is familiar to a solution that is not.

It is not necessary to conceal anything from a public insensible to contradiction and narcotized by technological diversions.

. . . Americans are the best entertained and quite likely the least well-informed people in the Western world.

A book is an attempt to make through permanent and to contribute to the great conversation conducted by authors of the past. […] The telegraph is suited only to the flashing of messages, each to be quickly replaced by a more up-to-date message. Facts push other facts into and then out of consciousness at speeds that neither permit nor require evaluation. (70)

Certainty abolishes hope, and robs us of renewal.

Public schooling does not serve a public; it creates a pubic.

The written word endures, the spoken word disappears