Socrates

Once made equal to man, woman becomes his superior.

To know, is to know that you know nothing. That is the meaning of true knowledge.

Do not do to others what angers you if done to you by others.

Slanderers do not hurt me because they do not hit me.

The only true wisdom is in knowing you know nothing.

By all means marry. If you get a good wife, you’ll be happy. If you get a bad one, you’ll become a philosopher… and that is a good thing for any man.

I love books.

The instruction we find in books is like fire. We fetch it from our neighbours, kindle it at home, communicate it to others, and it becomes the property of all.

Tis the good reader that makes the good book.

The last book I read was the book I’ve been rereading most of my life, The Fountainhead.

An autobiography is not about pictures; it’s about the stories; it’s about honesty and as much truth as you can tell without coming too close to other people’s privacy.

Books that you carry to the fire, and hold readily in your hand, are most useful after all.

I haven’t any right to criticize books, and I don’t do it except when I hate them. I often want to criticize Jane Austen, but her books madden me so that I can’t conceal my frenzy from the reader; and therefore I have to stop every time I begin. Every time I read Pride and Prejudice I want to dig her up and beat her over the skull with her own shin-bone.

Writing a book is an adventure. To begin with, it is a toy and an amusement. Then it becomes a mistress, then it becomes a master, then it becomes a tyrant. The last phase is that just as you are about to be reconciled to your servitude, you kill the monster, and fling him to the public.

A truly good book teaches me better than to read it. I must lay it down and commence living on its hint… What I began by reading I must finish by acting.

Books are the best of things if well used; if abused, among the worst. They are good for nothing but to inspire. I had better never see a book than be warped by its attraction clean out of my own orbit, and made a satellite instead of a system.

So please, oh please, we beg, we pray, go throw your TV set away, and in its place you can install, a lovely bookshelf on the wall.

When I look back, I am so impressed again with the life-giving power of literature. If I were a young person today, trying to gain a sense of myself in the world, I would do that again by reading, just as I did when I was young.

If you are going to get anywhere in life you have to read a lot of books.

Why not blame the libraries? They’re full of violent books.

I don’t care if a reader hates one of my stories, just as long as he finishes the book.