James Gleick Book Quotations

Information is not knowledge, and knowledge is not wisdom. Reading - even browsing - an old book can yield sustenance denied by a database search. Patience is a virtue, gluttony a sin.

It is significant that one says book lover and music lover and art lover but not record lover or CD lover or, conversely, text lover.

As soon as the printing press started flooding Europe with books, people were complaining that there were too many books and that it was going to change philosophy and the course of human thought in ways that wouldnt necessarily be good.

The quotation-business is booming. No subdivision of the culture seems too narrow to have a quotation book of its own.... It would be an understatement to say that these books lean on one another. To compare them is to stroll through a glorious jungle of incestuous mutual plagiarism.

I can't remember the last book that taught me so much, and so well, about what it means to be human.

As a technology, the book is like a hammer. That is to say, it is perfect: a tool ideally suited to its task. Hammers can be tweaked and varied but will never go obsolete. Even when builders pound nails by the thousand with pneumatic nail guns, every household needs a hammer. Likewise, the bicycle is alive and well. It was invented in a world without automobiles, and for speed and range it was quickly surpassed by motorcycles and all kinds of powered scooters. But there is nothing quaint about bicycles. They outsell cars.

Vengeful conquerors burn books as if the enemy's souls reside there, too.