If you want to use television to teach somebody, you must first teach them how to use television.

A book is a fragile creature, it suffers the wear of time, it fears rodents, the elements and clumsy hands. so the librarian protects the books not only against mankind but also against nature and devotes his life to this war with the forces of oblivion.

Creativity can only be anarchic, capitalist, Darwinian.

The thought that all experience will be lost at the moment of my death makes me feel pain and fear... What a waste, decades spent building up experience, only to throw it all away... We remedy this sadness by working. For example, by writing, painting, or building cities.

Simple mechanisms do not love.

If culture did not filter, it would be inane - as inane as the formless, boundless Internet is on its own. And if we all possessed the boundless knowledge of the Web, we would be idiots! Culture is an instrument for making a hierarchical system of intellectual labor.

We invented the car, and it made it easier for us to crash and die. If I gave a car to my grandfather, he would die in five minutes, while I have grown up slowly to accept speed.