The library is not a shrine for the worship of books. It is not a temple where literary incense must be burned or where one's one devotion to the bound book is expressed in ritual. A library, to modify the famous metaphor of Socrates, should be the delivery room for the birth of ideas - a place where history comes to life.

The sense of paralysis proceeds not so much out of the mammoth size of the problem but out of the puniness of the purpose.

Why are people more appalled at what they term an unnatural form of dying than by an unnatural form of living?

Man is not imprisoned by habit. Great changes in him can be wrought by crisis - once that crisis can be recognized and understood.

The heart of the matter is that some people like to cause injury or death to living things. And many of those who do not are indifferent to those who do.

If there is a conflict between the easy drift of prosperity and the ordeal of peace, the ordeal of peace comes first.

The essence of man is imperfection.