Books are the carriers of civilisation. Without
books, history is silent, literature dumb, science crippled, thought and
speculation at a standstill. Without books, the development of civilisation
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. - Barbara Tuchman,
(Bulletin of the American Academy of Arts and Sciences, Nov. 1980)
