Jan Kardys

“The library is not, as some would have it, a place for the retiring of disposition or faint of heart. It is not an ivory tower or a quiet room in a sanitarium facing away from the afternoon sun. It is, rather, a command center, a power base. A board room, a war room. An Oval Office for all who preside over their own destinies. One does not retreat from the world here; one prepares to join it at an advantage.”
― Eric Burns, Joy of Books

“United we stand, divided we fall. Let us not split into factions which must destroy that union upon which our existence hangs. Let”
― Eric Burns, Virtue, Valor, and Vanity: The Inside Story of the Founding Fathers and the Price of a More Perfect Union

“HAVING WON THE RIGHT TO vote, a number of women believed that they had in the process won the right to redefine the very notion of femininity. Geoffrey Perrett summarizes: Before the First World War women were arrested for smoking cigarettes in public, for using profanity, for appearing on public beaches without stockings, for driving automobiles without a man beside them, for wearing outlandish attire (for example, shorts, slacks, men’s hats), and for not wearing their corsets. Women accused of such offenses against public order and common decency were summoned before the courts, not only of small towns, but of big cities such as Chicago. In less than a decade these prosecutions stopped, simply because they seemed as absurd as they were futile.”
― Eric Burns, 1920

“Give a man a hoe and he is something to exploit. Give him a book and he is something to fear.”
― Eric Burns, Joy of Books