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af127f7 "I have never identified with the "K" in Kafka's works, by the way. Having grown up in a democracy, I have dared to imagine that I know at all times who is really in charge, what is really going on. This could be a mistake." leadership kafka knowledge Kurt Vonnegut Jr.
dd6eb42 "One German-American friend of mine, an architectural historian my own age, can be counted on to excoriate Woodrow Wilson after he has had several strong drinks. He goes on to say that it was Wilson who persuaded this country that it was patriotic to be stupid, to be proud of knowing only one language, of believing that all other cultures were inferior and ridiculous, offensive to God and common sense alike, that artists and teachers and studious persons in general were ninnies when it came to dealing with problems in life that really mattered, and on and on. This friend says that it was a particular misfortune for this country that the German-Americans had achieved such eminence in the arts and education when it was their turn to be scorned from on high. To hate all they did and stood for at that time, which included gymnastics, by the way, was to lobotomize not only the German-Americans but our culture. "That left American football," says my German-American friend, and someone is elected to drive him home." stupidity woodrow-wilson nationality patriotism ignorance knowledge Kurt Vonnegut Jr.
2c898c3 Miro hacia la biblioteca. Aquella sabiduria no calmaria nunca su fuego; siglos y siglos de palabras no podian satisfacer aquel deseo imperativo e irracional. sex libraries books wisdom world-literature knowledge desire frustration longing Richard Matheson
8fa88f3 Ignorance doesn't lead to salvation, nor does knowledge pave the way to sin. - Cinda Williams Chima salvation ignorance knowledge sin Scott Westerfeld
9c64e2e People who for years had not looked for things in booked found new appetites for knowledge when they spoke to him. To someone who came in asking for the latest novel he might sell not only the novel but a biological treatise on the life of ants, an ecological study of ancient man, a philosophical work, and a history of small sailing-craft. knowledge Russell Hoban
1ffd994 The entire pre-Columbian literature of Mexico, a vast library of tens of thousands of codices, was carefully and systematically destroyed by the priests and friars who followed in the wake of the conquistadors. In November 1530, for example, Bishop Juan de Zumarraga, who had shortly before been apointed 'Protector of the Indians' by the Spanish crown, proceeded to 'protect' his flock by burning at the stake a Mexican aristocrat, the lord of the city of Texcoco, whom he accused of having worshipped the rain god. In the city's marketplace Zumarraga 'had a pyramid formed of the documents of Aztec history, knowledge and literature, their paintings, manuscripts, and hieroglyphic writings, all of which he committed to the flames while the natives cried and prayed.' More than 30 years later, the holocaust of documents was still under way. In July 1562, in the main square of Mani (just south of modern Merida in the Yucatan), Bishop Diego de Landa burned thousands of Maya codices, story paintings, and hieroglyphs inscribed on rolled-up deer skins. He boasted of destroying countless 'idols' and 'altars,' all of which he described as 'works of the devil, designed by the evil one to delude the Indians and to prevent them from accepting Christianity.' Noting that the Maya 'used certain characters or letters, which they wrote in their books about the antiquities and their sciences' he informs us: 'We found a great number of books in these letters, and since they contained nothing but superstitions and falsehoods of the devil we burned them all, which they took most grievously and which gave them great pain. worship christianity codices flames savages conquest holocaust knowledge Graham Hancock
35b006d Children's as good as 'rithmetic to set you findin' out things. motherhood learning parenting knowledge children childhood parenthood Frances Hodgson Burnett
9abf2a9 How would you ever come to know God's name for that star? - You wouldn't, He holds it close, the boy said. It's a thing you'll never know. It's a lesson that sometimes we're meant to settle for ignorance. Right there's what mostly comes of knowledge [boy tips his chin at the battlefield] knowledge-brings-death knowledge Charles Frazier
aa0df4f The pursuit of your power takes all that you have, if you will be great--it leaves neither time, nor energy, for anything else. We are born with the seeds of power in us and driven to be what we are by a hunger that knows no slaking. Knowledge--power--to know what songs the stars sing; to center all the forces of creation upon a rune drawn in the air--we can never give over the seeking of it. It is the stuff of loneliness. knowledge power Barbara Hambly
93f7104 Holding a precious book meant to Mendel what an assignment with a woman might to another man. These moments were his platonic nights of love. Books had power over him; money never did. Great collectors, including the founder of a collection in Princeton University Library, tried in vain to recruit him as an adviser and buyer for their libraries--Jakob Mendel declined; no one could imagine him anywhere but in the Cafe Gluck. Thirty-three years ago, when his beard was still soft and black and he had ringlets over his forehead, he had come from the east to Vienna, a crook-backed lad, to study for the rabbinate, but he had soon abandoned Jehovah the harsh One God to give himself up to idolatry in the form of the brilliant, thousand-fold polytheism of books. That was when he had first found his way to the Cafe Gluck, and gradually it became his workplace, his headquarters, his post office, his world. Like an astronomer alone in his observatory, studying myriads of stars every night through the tiny round lens of the telescope, observing their mysterious courses, their wandering multitude as they are extinguished and then appear again, so Jakob Mendel looked through his glasses out from that rectangular table into the other universe of books, also eternally circling and being reborn in that world above our own. reading books love collecting-books knowledge obsession Stefan Zweig
cecb080 Rather than write about what you know, you told us, write about what you Assume that you know very little and that you'll never know much until you learn how to see. seeing writing observation knowledge Sigrid Nunez
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