Copyright © 2002 - 2004 Elisabeth Riba,
All Rights Reserved
Quotations |
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Recreation >
As new quotes are found, they will be added to the bottom of the list. "The creative person wants to be a know-it-all. He wants to know about all kinds of things: ancient history, nineteenth-century mathematics, current manufacturing techniques, flower arranging, and hog futures. Because he never knows when these ideas might come together to form a new idea. It may happen six minutes later or six months, or six years down the road. But he has faith that it will happen." "The great accomplishments of man have resulted from the transmission of ideas and enthusiasm." "If we knew what it was we were doing, it would not be called research, would it?" "Research is the process of going up alleys to see if they are blind." "Doing research on the Web is like using a library assembled piecemeal by pack rats and vandalized nightly." "Creativity represents a miraculous coming together of the uninhibited energy of the child with its apparent opposite and enemy, the sense of order imposed on the disciplined adult intelligence." "Creativity involves breaking out of established patterns in order to look at things in a different way." "The secret to creativity is knowing how to hide your sources." "When I examine myself and my methods of thought, I come to the conclusion that the gift of fantasy has meant more to me than my talent for absorbing positive knowledge." "Imagination is more important than knowledge." "Education means developing the mind, not stuffing the memory." "Knowledge is knowing -- or knowing where to find out." "We are drowning in information but starved for knowledge." "Smart is believing half of what you hear, brilliant is knowing which half to believe." "Imagine you are blazing a trail without a compass -- where will you end up? "[She] is one of the secret masters of the world: a librarian. They control information. Don't ever piss one off." "The more research I do the more I find everything is at random. Somebody goes off in this direction, somebody in that, and who knows what the end result is going to be?" "I find that a great part of the information I have was acquired by looking up something and finding something else on the way." "A learned man is an idler who kills time by study." "Oh, I did a little research on you. "Knowledge is power. Power corrupts. Study hard. Be evil." "Our whole American way of life is a great war of ideas, and librarians are the arms dealers selling weapons to both sides." "I rarely feel happier than when I am in a library -- very rarely feel more soothed and calm and secure. and there in the soft gloom of the stacks, I feel very much in my element -- a book among books, almost." "I am neither especially clever, nor especially gifted, just very, very curious." "People who love sausage and respect the law should never watch either one being made." "She is descended from a long line that her mother listened to." "The one important thing I have learned over the years is the difference between taking one's work seriously and taking one's self seriously. The first is imperative and the second is disastrous." "A good lesson in keeping your perspective is: Take your job seriously but don't take yourself seriously." "Off on a tangent; back in a secant..." "I don't think it's overstating things to suggest [librarians] are the thin grey line between literacy and barbarism." "A library ... should be the delivery room for the birth of ideas -- a place where history comes to life." "You can't spell 'Librarians' without 'Lis Riba.'" "He has only half learned the art of reading who has not added to it the even more refined accomplishments of skipping and skimming." "For the face, I grant, I might well blush to offer, but the mind I shall never be ashamed to present." "Public business, my son, must always be done by somebody. It will be done by somebody or other. If wise men decline it, others will not; if honest men refuse it, others will not." "The clock would be more simple if you destroyed all the wheels and left only the weights or the spring, but it would not tell the time of day. A farmer's barn would be more simple if without apartments and he turned in all together his horses, cattle, sheep and hogs: yet his haymows would be wasted and his stock killed and gored. A ship would be more simple without a rudder, but one mast and but one sail. A city would be more simple if you built it all in one house or barrack without departments and turned all the people in together. The solar system would be more simple if all the planets were destroyed and you left only the sun. The universe would be more simple if it were all in one globe. The earth would be more simple if it were all fire, water, air or earth, but its inhabitants must perish in either case. The laws would be more simple if all reduced to one 'Be it enacted that every man, woman and child shall do their duty.' It is silly to be eternally harping upon simplicity in a form of government. The simplest of all possible governments is a despotism in one. Simplicity is not the summum bonum." "[Giles]'s gonna be alright. He's like super librarian, y'know? Everyone forgets, Willow, that knowledge is the ultimate weapon." "The problem with defending the purity of the English language is that the English language is as pure as a crib-house whore. It not only borrows words from other languages; it has on occasion chased other languages down dark alley-ways, clubbed them unconscious and rifled their pockets for new vocabulary." Xiphias's First Law: "That which exists is possible." Xiphias's Law of Pizza: "The epitome of good pizza is the pizza from the store around the corner where you grew up." Xiphias's First Law of Bookshelves: "There is no such thing as too many books, only not enough bookcases." Xiphias's Second Law of Bookshelves: "There is no such thing as enough bookcases, only insufficient books." "Books breed like rabbits; bookcases breed like elephants." "If only I'd known that one day my differentness would be an asset, then my early life would have been much easier." "The government is the employee of the American people. We're the boss. And I realized that specifically we're the pointy-haired boss from Dilbert. We want to government to do amazing things for us, brilliantly and without flaw, for free." "Six months in the laboratory will save you a whole afternoon in the library." "No day in which you learn something is a complete loss" "If the Republicans really think it is such a good idea not to have government regulation, let's try an experiment. Let's just take down all the traffic signs and signals and see what happens. Think voluntary compliance will make us safer? And there's not even a monetary incentive to drive unsafely." "I'm not a historian or etymologist; I just have a lot of useless crap in my head." "Experience teaches us to be most on our guard to protect liberty when the government's purpose is beneficent. Men born to freedom are naturally alert to repel invasion of their liberty by evil-minded rulers. The greatest dangers to liberty lurk in insidious encroachment by men of zeal, well-meaning but without understanding." "The punishment which the wise suffer who refuse to take part in the government, is to live under the government of worse men." "The trouble with the world is that the stupid are cocksure and the intelligent are full of doubt." "Libraries have always been home to me. They have seemed not inhibiting, not scary, but veritable lighthouses of Utopian order and generosity amid the clutter and ignorance and selfishness of so much of the life that is lived in this world." "I really didn't realize the librarians were, you know, such a dangerous group. They are subversive. You think they're just sitting there at the desk, all quiet and everything. They're like plotting the revolution, man. I wouldn't mess with them." "Ok, sure. We've all got our little preconceived notions about what librarians are and what they do. Many people think of them as diminutive civil servants, scuttling about "Sssh-ing" people and stamping things. Well, think again buster. "What can I say? Librarians rule." |
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Copyright © 2002 - 2004 Elisabeth Riba, |