Librarian

🇿🇦David Hume

Philosophy

Empiricism

1796–1864

"Hume Society: An international scholarly society."

Johann Wolfgang von Goethe

Literature

Age of Enlightenment

1749–1832

"Let the noble man Be generous and good, Tirelessly achieving What is just and useful: Let him be a model For those beings whom he surmises."

Immanuel Kant

Philosophy

Enlightenment

1724–1804

"The concept of space is not abstracted from external sensations."

🇩🇪Friedrich Hölderlin

Philosophy

Idealism

1770–1843

"What is the wisdom of a book compared with the wisdom of an angel?"

🇩🇪Friedrich Schiller

Literature

Sturm und Drang

1895–1990

"Wouldst thou know thyself, observe the actions of others. Wouldst thou other men know, look thou within thine own heart."

🇦🇷Jorge Luis Borges

Literature

1899–1986

"It seemed incredible to me that day without premonitions or symbols should be the one of my inexorable death."

Mao Zedong

Politics

Marxism

1893–1976

"This is a movement on a vast scale. It has indeed mobilized the masses. It is of very great significance to the revolutionization of the thinking of the people throughout the country."

🇺🇸Daniel J. Boorstin

Literature

1914–2004

"The institutional scene in which American man has developed has lacked that accumulation from intervening stages which has been so dominant a feature of the European landscape."

Giacomo Casanova

diplomacy

1725–1798

"When a sonnet is mediocre it is bad, for it should be sublime."

Joseph Priestley

Science

1733–1804

"From the fame opinion of a soul distinct from the body came the practice of praying, first for the dead, and then to them with a long train of other absurd opinions, and superstitious practices."

🇺🇸J. Edgar Hoover

Literature

1895–1972

"We are a fact-gathering organization only. We don’t clear anybody. We don’t condemn anybody."

🇮🇷Mohammad Khatami

Politics

b. 1943

"Hezbollah is like a shining sun which warms up all oppressed Muslims, especially those in Palestine and Lebanon."

🇫🇷Georges Bataille

Literature

Structuralism

1897–1962

"Love then screams in my own throat; I am the Jesuve, the filthy parody of the torrid and blinding sun."

🇩🇪Gershom Scholem

Literature

1897–1982

"Audio of Gershom Scholem lecturing on Kabbalah in 1975"

🇬🇧Herbert Butterfield

Philosophy

English school of international relations theory

1900–1979

"The study of the past with one eye upon the present is the source of all sins and sophistries in history. It is the essence of what we mean by the word "unhistorical."

"Think of it! We could have gone on longing for one another and pretending not to notice forever. This obsession with dignity can ruin your life if you let it."

"The purpose of a classification scheme is to arrange information, in documents on shelves or on cards in indexes, in a sequence that will be helpful to the user."

🇬🇧Richard Bentley

Religion

1662–1742

"The fortuitous or casual concourse of atoms."

🇺🇸Archibald MacLeish

Literature

1892–1982

"We are as great as our belief in human liberty — no greater. And our belief in human liberty is only ours when it is larger than ourselves."

🇺🇸Audre Lorde

Literature

1934–1992

"When I dare to be powerful, to use my strength in the service of my vision, then it becomes less and less important whether I am afraid."

🇺🇸Kathleen Norris

Literature

1880–1966

"Home ought to be our clearing house, the place from which we go forth lessoned and disciplined, and ready for life."

🇩🇪Erich Auerbach

Literature

Realism

1892–1957

"In the Old Testament stories, … the sublime influence of God here reaches so deeply into the everyday that the two realms of the sublime and the everyday are not only actually unseparated but basically inseparable."

"People are able to live with only half a heart, to live without real compassion, because they are able to use words that are only forms."

🇺🇸Melvil Dewey

Education

1851–1931

"The librarian must be the librarian militant before he can be the librarian triumphant."

🇩🇪Gottfried Leibniz

Mathematics

rationalism

1646–1716

"G. W. Leibniz Texts and Translations, Donald Rutherford, U California, San Diego"

🇦🇹Robert Musil

Philosophy

1880–1942

"Ted Gioia, "A Fresh Look at The Man Without Qualities," Great Books Guide"

🇺🇸John Cotton Dana

Science

1856–1929

"Who dares to teach must never cease to learn."

🇺🇸Madeleine L'Engle

Literature

1918–2007

"Kids don't hesitate to ask questions. And it's a great honor to have the kids say, "Your books have made me trust you."

"It is very difficult to live among people you love and hold back from offering them advice."

🇫🇷Anatole France

Literature

freethought

1844–1924

"Jealousy is a virtue of democracies which preserves them from tyrants."

🏛️Apollonius of Rhodes

Literature

-294–-214

"The Harpies swooped down through the clouds and snatched the food from his mouth and hands with their beaks, sometimes leaving him not a morsel, sometimes a few scraps, so that he might live and be tormented."

🇬🇧Frederic G. Kenyon

Politics

1863–1952

"The aim of the scholarly editor is not to produce the the easiest text for the reader, but to get as near as he can to the text of the author."

🇺🇸Laura Bush

Politics

b. 1946

"In almost every single way, George and I share the same values. And if we differ on some issues, it's very, very minor."