A society can exist - many do exist - without writing, but no society can exist without reading. - Alberto Manguel

Books read in a public library never have the same flavour as books read in the attic or the kitchen.

As centuries of dictators have known, an illiterate crowd is easiest to rule; since the craft of reading cannot be untaught once it has been acquired, the second-best recourse is to limit its scope.

Socrates affirmed that only that which the reader already knows can be sparked by a reading, and that the knowledge cannot be acquired through dead letters.