“I feel free and strong. If I were not a reader of books I could not feel this way. Whatever may happen to me, thank God that I can read, that I have truly touched the minds of other men.”
― Walter Tevis, quote from Mockingbird
“Reading is too intimate,' Spofforth said. 'It will put you too close to the feelings and ideas of others. It will disturb and confuse you.”
― Walter Tevis, quote from Mockingbird
“Reading is the subtle and thorough sharing of the ideas and feelings by underhanded means. It is a gross invasion of Privacy and a direct violation of the Constitutions of the Third, Fourth, and Fifth Age. The Teaching of Reading is equally a crime against Privacy and Personhood. One to five years on each count.”
― Walter Tevis, quote from Mockingbird
“It all began, I suppose, with learning to build fires—to warm the cave and keep the predators out. And it ended with time-release Valium.”
― Walter Tevis, quote from Mockingbird
“I am human. I talk and I listen and I read.”
― Walter Tevis, quote from Mockingbird
“When literacy died, so had history.”
― Walter Tevis, quote from Mockingbird
“New York is nearly a grave. The Empire State Building is its gravestone.”
― Walter Tevis, quote from Mockingbird
“If I cannot read and learn and have things that are worth thinking about, I would rather immolate myself than go on living. Synthetic”
― Walter Tevis, quote from Mockingbird
“They were willing to accept their stringent piety, and silence, and sexual restraints, all unthinkingly, along with a few platitudes about Jesus and Moses and Noah; they were overwhelmed, however, at the effort it would require to understand the literature that was the real source of their religion. I”
― Walter Tevis, quote from Mockingbird
“The Age of Technology has rusted.”
― Walter Tevis, quote from Mockingbird
“It feels terrible. Being in love feels terrible. I”
― Walter Tevis, quote from Mockingbird
Walter Tevis
Born place: in San Francisco, The United States
Born date February 28, 1928
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“People only see what they are prepared to see.”
― Ralph Waldo Emerson, quote from The Essential Writings of Ralph Waldo Emerson
“That's you, right?' he asks me.
'Yeah.'
'Cute. Not that I, uh, think little kids are cute. Just that you were cute. I mean, you can see how you turned out to be so...oh.”
― Elizabeth Scott, quote from Something, Maybe
“He loved his job. What was advertising, anyway, but a knowledge of people and of which buttons to push to nudge them into opening their wallets?
It was, he often though, an accepted, creative, even expected twist on picking those wallets. For a man who had spent the first half of his life as a thief, it was the perfect career.”
― Nora Roberts, quote from Rising Tides
“Any government will work if authority and responsibility are equal and coordinate. This does not insure “good” government, it simply insures that it will work. But such governments are rare — most people want to run things, but want no part of the blame. This used to be called the “backseat driver” syndrome.”
― Robert A. Heinlein, quote from The Notebooks of Lazarus Long
“Why were so few voices raised in the ancient world in protest against the ruthlessness of man? Why are human beings so obsequious, ready to kill and ready to die at the call of kings and chieftains? Perhaps it is because they worship might, venerate those who command might, and are convinced that it is by force that man prevails. The splendor and the pride of kings blind the people. The Mesopotamian, for example, felt convinced that authorities were always right: "The command of the palace, like the command of Anu, cannot be altered. The king's word is right; his utterance, like that of a god, cannot be changed!" The prophets repudiated the work as well as the power of man as an object of supreme adoration. They denounced "arrogant boasting" and "haughty pride" (Isa. 10:12), the kings who ruled the nations in anger, the oppressors (Isa. 14:4-6), the destroyers of nations, who went forth to inflict waste, ruin, and death (Jer. 4:7), the "guilty men, whose own might is their god" (Hab. 1: 11).
Their course is evil,
Their might is not right.
Jeremiah 23:10
The end of public authority is to realize the moral law, a task for which both knowledge and understanding as well as the possession of power are indispensable means. Yet inherent in power is the tendency to breed conceit. " . . . one of the most striking and one of the most pervasive features of the prophetic polemic [is] the denunciation and distrust of power in all its forms and guises. The hunger of the powerfit! knows no satiety; the appetite grows on what it feeds. Power exalts itself and is incapable of yielding to any transcendent judgment; it 'listens to no voice' (Zeph. 3:2) ." It is the bitter irony of history that the common people, who are devoid of power and are the prospective victims of its abuse, are the first to become the ally of him who accumulates power. Power is spectacular, while its end, the moral law, is inconspicuous.”
― Abraham Joshua Heschel, quote from The Prophets
You Had Me At Hello
Grass for His Pillow
The Marvels
Extraordinary Means
The Raven King
Catechism of the Cat...BookQuoters is a community of passionate readers who enjoy sharing the most meaningful, memorable and interesting quotes from great books. As the world communicates more and more via texts, memes and sound bytes, short but profound quotes from books have become more relevant and important. For some of us a quote becomes a mantra, a goal or a philosophy by which we live. For all of us, quotes are a great way to remember a book and to carry with us the author’s best ideas.
We thoughtfully gather quotes from our favorite books, both classic and current, and choose the ones that are most thought-provoking. Each quote represents a book that is interesting, well written and has potential to enhance the reader’s life. We also accept submissions from our visitors and will select the quotes we feel are most appealing to the BookQuoters community.
Founded in 2023, BookQuoters has quickly become a large and vibrant community of people who share an affinity for books. Books are seen by some as a throwback to a previous world; conversely, gleaning the main ideas of a book via a quote or a quick summary is typical of the Information Age but is a habit disdained by some diehard readers. We feel that we have the best of both worlds at BookQuoters; we read books cover-to-cover but offer you some of the highlights. We hope you’ll join us.
