What I meant to say was...

A closed mind is a wonderful thing to lose. If you can't be funny, be interesting. - Harold Ross You must have three things to be happy: something to do, something to love and something to hope for. As regards intellectual work, it remains a fact, indeed, that great decisions in the realms of thought and momentous discoveries and solutions of problems are only possible to an individual working in solitude. -Sigmund Freud, 1939 I don't necessarily agree with everything I say. -Marshall McLuhan, 1980 Hubris is stealing fire from the gods. Chutzpah is offering to sell it back. To sit alone in the lamplight with a book spread out before you, and hold intimate converse with people of unseen generations--such is a pleasure beyond compare. -Kenko Yoshida, 1352 The instruction we find in books is like fire. We fetch it from our neighbours, kindle it at home, communicate it to others, and it becomes the property of all. -Voltaire, 1778 There is no remedy so easy as books, which even if they do not give cheerfulness, at least restore quiet to the most troubled mind. -Lady Mary Wortley Montagu, 1762 A truly great book should be read in youth, again in maturity and once more in old age, as a fine building should be seen by morning light, at noon and by moonlight. -Robertson Davies Records carefully preserved for a century were destroyed during the World War II bombing of Manchester. It is not only the living who are killed in war. -Isaac Asimov He will always be a slave who does not know how to live upon a little. -Horace (65-8 BCE) People change and forget to tell each other. -Lillian Hellman(1905-1984) The fetters imposed on liberty at home have ever been forged out of the weapons provided for defence against real, pretended, or imaginary dangers from abroad. -James Madison(1751-1836) Don't worry about people stealing your ideas. If your ideas are any good, you'll have to ram them down people's throats. - Howard Aiken, IBM There lives more faith in honest doubt, / Believe me, than in half the creeds. -Alfred, Lord Tennyson (1809-1892) The innocent and the beautiful have no enemy but time. -William Butler Yeats, (1865-1939) I have always wished that my computer would be as easy to use as my telephone. My wish has come true. I no longer know how to use my telephone.-Bjarne Stroustrup, computer science professor, designer of C++ programming language (1950- ) When you have only two pennies left in the world, buy a loaf of bread with one, and a lily with the other. -Chinese proverb Ironically, anyone using a public terminal at a public library today wouldn't be able to read today's Supreme Court decision overturning the Texas anti-sodomy law because of the Supreme Court's decision on web filtering on public terminals in public libraries. - Chris Zammarelli If a triangle could speak, it would say, that God is eminently triangular, while a circle would say that the divine nature is eminently circular. -Baruch Spinoza (1632-1677) Moral certainty is always a sign of cultural inferiority. The more uncivilized the man, the surer he is that he knows precisely what is right and what is wrong. - H.L.Mencken When governments fear the people there is liberty. When the people fear the government there is tyranny. -Thomas Jefferson,(1743-1826) We cautiously approach the question of universals. It is arguable whether universals exist, and how widely valid a principle must be before we confer on it the authority of a universal. It all depends on the size of one's universe. - Lewis Rowell, International Society for the Study of Time If there be time to expose through discussion the falsehood and the fallacies, to avert the evil by the processes of education, the remedy to be applied is more speech, not enforced silence. -Louis Dembitz Brandeis, lawyer, judge, and writer (1856-1941) Few people think more than two or three times a year. I've made an international reputation for myself by thinking once or twice a week. -George Bernard Shaw, writer, Nobel laureate (1856-1950) I would rather be exposed to the inconveniences attending too much liberty than to those attending too small a degree of it. -Thomas Jefferson (1743-1826) We despise all reverences and all objects of reverence which are outside the pale of our list of sacred things. And yet, with strange inconsistency, we are shocked when other people despise and defile the things which are holy to us. -Mark Twain It's a poor sort of memory that only works backwards. -Lewis Carroll,(1832-1898) I'm not tense -- just terribly, terribly alert. To announce that there must be no criticism of the President, or that we are to stand by the President, right or wrong, is not only unpatriotic and servile, but is morally treasonable to the American public. -Theodore Roosevelt, 26th US President (1858-1919) Every reader finds himself. The writer's work is merely a kind of optical instrument that makes it possible for the reader to discern what, without this book, he would perhaps never have seen in himself. -Marcel Proust, (1871-1922) You think your pains and heartbreaks are unprecedented in the history of the world, but then you read. It was books that taught me that the things that tormented me were the very things that connected me with all the people who were alive, or who have ever been alive. -James Baldwin, writer (1924-1987) A scholar knows no boredom. -Jean Paul Richter (1763-1825) ["Song" by Frederic Prokosch - appeared in a 1939 issue of the New Yorker.] Michael the hero is dying in Africa Hugo the spy is measuring the hill And the madman Smith is watching the clubhouse, Looking for someone to kill The birds of disorder are crossing the continent No one knows whither and no one knows why And softly, softly, the ones I love Are getting ready to die Laughter is inner jogging. -Norman Cousins (1915-1990) Midway in the journey of our life/ I came to myself in a dark wood,/ for the straight way was lost - Dante Alighieri (1265–1321) Sometimes even to live is an act of courage. -Lucius Annaeus Seneca, (BCE 3-65 CE) Success usually comes to those who are too busy to be looking for it. -Henry David Thoreau (1817-1862) I like to believe that people in the long run are going to do more to promote peace than our governments. Indeed, I think that people want peace so much that one of these days governments had better get out of the way and let them have it. -Dwight D. Eisenhower, U.S. general and 34th president (1890-1969) Beware of programmers who carry screwdrivers. -Leonard Brandwein The secret of life is to have a task, something you devote your entire life to, something you bring everything to, every minute of the day for your whole life. And the most important thing is -- it must be something you cannot possibly do. - Henry Moore A democratic society depends upon an informed and educated citizenry. - Thomas JEFFERSON (1743-1826) You see, I don't believe that libraries should be drab places where people sit in silence, and that's been the main reason for our policy of employing wild animals as librarians.- Monty Python skit I have always imagined that Paradise will be a kind of library Jorge Luis BORGES (1899-1986 Information is the currency of democracy. - Thomas JEFFERSON (1743-1826) We are not afraid to entrust the American people with unpleasant facts, foreign ideas, alien philosophies, and competitive values. For a nation that is afraid to let its people judge the truth and falsehood in an open market is a nation that is afraid of its people- John F. KENNEDY I am what the librarians have made me with a little assistance from a professor of Greek and a few poets. -- Bernard Keble SANDWELL (1876-1954) If it is noticed that much of my outside work concerns itelf with libraries, there is an extremely good reason for this. I think that the better part of my education, almost as important as that secured in the schools and the universities, came from libraries. - Irving STONE (1903-1989) I received the fundamentals of my education in school, but that was not enough. My real education, the superstructure, the details, the true architecture, I got out of the public library. For an impoverished child whose family could not afford to buy books, the library was the open door to wonder and achievement, and I can never be sufficiently grateful that I had the wit to charge through that door and make the most of it. Now, when I read constantly about the way in which library funds are being cut and cut, I can only think that the door is closing and that American society has found one more way to destroy itself. - Isaac ASIMOV I've been drunk for about a week now, and I though it might sober me up to sit in a library. - The Great Gatsby, chapter 3 - F.Scott FITZGERALD (1896-1948) There is no such thing as a moral or immoral book. Books are either well written or badly written. That is all. - Oscar Wilde Make thy books thy companions. Let thy cases and shelves be thy pleasure grounds and gardens. - Judah ibn-Tibbon (12th century) Good as it is to inherit a library, it is better to collect one. - Augustine Birrell My library Was dukedom large enough. - Shakespeare, The Tempest I have lost all sense of home, having moved about so much. It means to me now -- only that place where the books are kept. - John Steinbeck People say that life is the thing, but I prefer reading. - Logan Pearsall Smith I find that a great part of the information I have was acquired by looking something up and finding something else on the way. - Franklin P. Adams Don't join the book burners. Don't think you are going to conceal faults by concealing evidence that they ever existed. Don't be afraid to go into your library and read every book. - Dwight D. Eisenhower Never lend books, for no one ever returns them; the only books I have in my library are books that other people have lent me. - Anatole France To add a library to a house is to give that house a soul. - Cicero Libraries are not made; they grow. - Augustine Birrell

I have always wished that my computer would be as easy to use as my telephone. My wish has come true. I no longer know how to use my telephone.-Bjarne Stroustrup, computer science professor, designer of C++ programming language (1950- )