Tim Goebel > Tim's Quotes

“Books are the carriers of civilization...They are companions, teachers, magicians, bankers of the treasures of the mind. Books are humanity in print.”
― Barbara W. Tuchman

“Books are the carriers of civilization. Without books, history is silent, literature dumb, science crippled, thought and speculation at a standstill. Without books, the development of civilization would have been impossible. They are engines of change (as the poet said), windows on the world and lighthouses erected in the sea of time. They are companions, teachers, magicians, bankers of the treasures of the mind. Books are humanity in print.

[Bulletin of the American Academy of Arts and Sciences, Vol. 34, No. 2 (Nov. 1980), pp. 16-32]”
― Barbara Tuchman

“Never trust a man who reads only one book.”
― Arturo Pérez-Reverte, Purity of Blood

“You don't choose your friends, they choose you, and you either reject them or you accept them without reservations.”
― Arturo Pérez-Reverte, The Flanders Panel

“Everyone gets the devil he deserves.”
― Arturo Pérez-Reverte, The Club Dumas

“What about the future?"
"We'll talk about the future when it gets here.”
― Arturo Pérez-Reverte, The Queen of the South

“As for me, all I know is that I know nothing. And when I want to know something, I look it up in books--their memory never fails”
― Arturo Pérez-Reverte, The Club Dumas

“Becoming a book collector is like joining a religion: it’s for life.”
― Arturo Pérez-Reverte, The Club Dumas

“...the problem with words is that once spoken, they cannot find their way back to the speaker alone.”
― Arturo Pérez-Reverte, Purity of Blood

“He did not want to think, but it was inevitable that he would.”
― Arturo Pérez-Reverte, Purity of Blood

“When I was your age, television was called books.”
― William Goldman, The Princess Bride

“Who controls the past controls the future. Who controls the present controls the past.”
― George Orwell, 1984

“In a time of deceit telling the truth is a revolutionary act.”
― George Orwell

“Prisons are universities of crime, maintained by the state.”
― Peter Kropotkin, In Russian and French Prisons

“It is only those who do nothing who makes no mistake.”
― Peter Kropotkin, Anarchism: A Collection of Revolutionary Writings

“A promise made is a debt unpaid," The Cremation of Sam McGee.”
― Robert W. Service

“Nobody ever thinks of himself as a villain, does he? Even monsters hold high opinions of themselves.”
― Victor LaValle, The Ballad of Black Tom

“Unsupervised reading is a blessing for a certain kind of child”
― Victor LaValle, The Changeling

“Girl, every choice we make is a new tomorrow. Whole worlds waiting to be born.”
― P. Djèlí Clark, Ring Shout

“The only important elements in any society are the artistic and the criminal, because they alone, by questioning the society’s values, can force it to change.”
― Samuel R. Delany, Empire Star

“The future is already here – it's just not evenly distributed.”
― William Gibson

“When I was young, I used to think that wealth and power would bring me happiness... I was right.”
― Gahan Wilson

“For last year's words belong to last year's language
And next year's words await another voice.”
― T.S. Eliot, Four Quartets

“Only those who will risk going too far can possibly find out how far one can go.”
― Harry Crosby, Transit of Venus

“This is the way the world ends
Not with a bang but a whimper.”
― T.S. Eliot

“Words are, of course, the most powerful drug used by mankind.”
― Rudyard Kipling

“If you can keep your head when all about you
Are losing theirs and blaming it on you,
If you can trust yourself when all men doubt you,
But make allowance for their doubting too;

If you can wait and not be tired by waiting,
Or being lied about, don't deal in lies,
Or being hated, don't give way to hating,
And yet don't look too good, nor talk too wise

If you can dream - and not make dreams your master;
If you can think - and not make thoughts your aim;
If you can meet with Triumph and Disaster
And treat those two impostors just the same;

If you can bear to hear the truth you've spoken
Twisted by knaves to make a trap for fools,
Or watch the things you gave your life to, broken,
And stoop and build 'em up with worn-out tools

If you can make one heap of all your winnings
And risk it on one turn of pitch-and-toss,
And lose, and start again at your beginnings
And never breathe a word about your loss;

If you can force your heart and nerve and sinew
To serve your turn long after they are gone,
And so hold on when there is nothing in you
Except the will which says to them: 'Hold on!'

If you can talk with crowds and keep your virtue,
Or walk with Kings - nor lose the common touch,
If neither foes nor loving friends can hurt you,
If all men count with you, but none too much;

If you can fill the unforgiving minute
With sixty seconds' worth of distance run,
Yours is the Earth and everything that's in it,
And - which is more - you'll be a Man, my son!”
― Rudyard Kipling, If: A Father's Advice to His Son

“He wrapped himself in quotations - as a beggar would enfold himself in the purple of Emperors.”
― Rudyard Kipling, Many Inventions

“I always prefer to believe the best of everybody; it saves so much trouble”
― Rudyard Kipling

“I never made a mistake in my life; at least, never one that I couldn't explain away afterwards.”
― Rudyard Kipling, Under The Deodars