"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."

“A book is like a piece of rope; it takes on meaning only in connection with the things it holds together.”

“There is a tendency to mistake data for wisdom, just as there has always been a tendency to confuse logic with values, intelligence with insight. Unobstructed access to facts can produce unlimited good only if it is matched by the desire and ability to find out what they mean and where they lead. Facts are terrible things if left sprawling and unattended. They are too easily regarded as evaluated certainties rather than as the rawest of raw materials crying to be processed into the texture of logic. It requires a very unusual mind, Whitehead said, to undertake the analysis of a fact. The computer can provide a correct number, but it may be an irrelevant number until judgment is pronounced.”

“History is a vast early warning system.”

“What was most significant about the lunar voyage was not that men set foot on the moon but that they set eye on the earth.”

“Inevitably, an individual is measured by his or her largest concerns.”

“The more serious the illness, the more important it is for you to fight back, mobilizing all your resources — spiritual, emotional, intellectual, physical.”