If you want to use television to teach somebody, you must first teach them how to use television. - Umberto Eco

A library's ideal function is to be a little bit like a bouquiniste's stall, a place for trouvailles.

...It would hardly be a waste of time if sometimes even the most advanced students in the cognitive sciences were to pay a visit to their ancestors. It is frequently claimed in American philosophy departments that, in order to be a philosopher, it is not necessary to revisit the history of philosophy. It is like the claim that one can become a painter without having ever seen a single work by Raphael, or a writer without having ever read the classics. Such things are theoretically possible; but the 'primitive' artist, condemned to an ignorance of the past, is always recognizable as such and rightly labeled as naïf. It is only when we consider past projects revealed as utopian or as failures that we are apprised of the dangers and possibilities for failure for our allegedly new projects. The study of the deeds of our ancestors is thus more than an atiquarian pastime, it is an immunological precaution.

Los perdedores, como los autodidactas, tienen siempre conocimientos más vastos que los ganadores. Si quieres ganar tienes que saber una cosa sola y no perder tiempo en sabértelas todas; el placer de la erudición está reservado a los perdedores. Cuanto más sabe uno, es que peor le han ido las cosas.