Jeffersonian isolationism expressed an essentially cosmopolitan spirit. The Jeffersonian was determined -- even at the expense of separating himself from the rest of the globe, and even though he be charged with provincial selfishness -- to preserve America as an uncontaminated laboratory.

Throught human history, illusions of knowledge, not ignorance, have proven to be the principal obstacles to discovery.

Technology is so much fun but we can drown in our technology. The fog of information can drive out knowledge.

We need not be theologians to see that we have shifted responsibility for making the world interesting from God to the newspaperman.

There is no cure for illusion. There is only the opportunity for discovery.

Knowledge is not simply another commodity. On the contrary. Knowledge is never used up. It increases by diffusion and grows by dispersion.

The fog of information can drive out knowledge.

The Library of Congress is a multimedia encyclopedia. These are the tentacles of a nation.

Referring to the diverse holdings of the library, including motion pictures, photographs, recordings, posters and other historic objects which collectively far outnumber the books.

There is no cure for illusions. There is only the opportunity for discovery.

While the easiest way in metaphysics is to condemn all metaphysics as nonsense, the easiest way in morals is to elevate the common practice of the community into a moral absolute.

Planning for the future without a sense of history is like planting cut flowers.

God is the celebrity author of the world's best seller. We have made god into the biggest celebrity of all, to contain our own emptiness.

In the twentieth century our highest praise is to call the Bible 'The World's Best Seller.' And it has come to be more and more difficult to say whether we think it is a best seller because it is great, or vice versa.

Destruction is easy for humans but creation is too difficult.

Best-sellerism is the star system of the book world. A best seller is a celebrity among books. It is a book known primarily (sometimes exclusively) for its well-knownness.

Disagreement produces debate but dissent produces dissension.

The image is made to order, tailored to us. An ideal, on the hand, has a claim on us. It does not serve us, we serve it. If we have trouble striding toward it, we assume the matter is with us, and not the ideal.

While knowledge is orderly and cumulative, information is random and miscellaneous.

The mind is a vagrant thing.... Thinking is not analogous to a person working in a laboratory who invents something on company time.

Some are born great, some achieve greatness, and some hire public relations officers.