„Do not imagine that there is any bird more easily caught by decoy, nor any fish sooner fixed on the hook by wormy bait, than are all these poor fools neatly tricked into servitude by the slightest feather passed, so to speak, before their mouths. Truly it is a marvelous thing that they let themselves be caught so quickly at the slightest tickling of their fancy. Plays, farces, spectacles, gladiators, strange beasts, medals, pictures, and other such opiates, these were for ancient peoples the bait toward slavery, the price of their liberty, the instruments of tyranny. By these practices and enticements the ancient dictators so successfully lulled their subjects under the yoke, that the stupefied peoples, fascinated by the pastimes and vain pleasures flashed before their eyes, learned subservience as naïvely, but not so creditably, as little children learn to read by looking at bright picture books.“

„Do not bite at the bait of pleasure till you know there is no hook beneath it.“

—  Thomas Jefferson 3rd President of the United States of America 1743 - 1826

„A lot of so-called Christian souls are not fine. People need to look inside themselves and look at the lives they’re leading and fix themselves before they try to fix other people.“

—  Juliana Hatfield American guitarist/singer-songwriter and author 1967

Interview by Matt Ryan for MAGNET magazine

„It is strange that there should be so little reading in the world, and so much writing. People in general do not willingly read, if they can have any thing else to amuse them.“

—  Samuel Johnson English writer 1709 - 1784

May 1, 1783, p. 513
Vol IV

„No entertainment is so cheap as reading, nor any pleasure so lasting.“

—  Mary Wortley Montagu writer and poet from England 1689 - 1762

„But it’s not so hard, learning to picture yourself as part of a great chain. One that began long before you, and will go on long after.“

—  David Brin, kniha Glory Season

Zdroj: Glory Season (1993), Chapter 21 (p. 387)

„He commenced a systematic search of the cabin; but his attention was soon riveted by the books which seemed to exert a strange and powerful influence over him, so that he could scarce attend to aught else for the lure of the wondrous puzzle which their purpose presented to him.
Among the other books were a primer, some child's readers, numerous picture books, and a great dictionary. All of these he examined, but the pictures caught his fancy most, though the strange little bugs which covered the pages where there were no pictures excited his wonder and deepest thought.“

—  Edgar Rice Burroughs, kniha Tarzan of the Apes

Zdroj: Tarzan of the Apes (1912), Ch. 7 : The Light of Knowledge

„You learn to speak by speaking, to study by studying, to run by running, to work by working; and just so you learn to love God and man by loving. All those who think to learn in any other way deceive themselves.“

—  Francis de Sales French bishop, saint, writer and Doctor of the Church j 1567 - 1622

Quoted by Bishop Jean-Pierre Camus in The Spirit of Saint Francis de Sales, ch. 1, Pg. 3 (1880)

„Where is the book in which the teacher can read about what teaching is? The children themselves are this book. We should not learn to teach out of any book other than the one lying open before us and consisting of the children themselves.“

—  Rudolf Steiner Austrian esotericist 1861 - 1925

Zdroj: Rhythms of Learning

„Before they read words, children are reading pictures.“

—  David Wiesner American children's illustrator and writer 1956

Zdroj: Free Fall

„God, he thought, her eyes are so bright, flashing, deep, full of promise, all those things eyes are in books but never are in life, and she was his.“

—  John Crowley, kniha Little, Big

Zdroj: Little, Big

„I have twice gone fishing with rod and line just because other boys asked me to, but this sport was soon made impossible for me by the treatment of the worms that were put on the hook for bait, and the wrenching of the mouths of the fishes that were caught. I gave it up, and even found courage enough to dissuade other boys from going.“

—  Albert Schweitzer French-German physician, theologian, musician and philosopher 1875 - 1965

Memoirs of Childhood and Youth (1924)

„Life is a game with many rules but no referee. One learns how to play it more by watching it than by consulting any book, including the holy book. Small wonder, then, that so many play dirty, that so few win, that so many lose.“

—  Joseph Brodsky Russian and American poet and Nobel Prize for Literature laureate 1940 - 1996

„By just taking a breath you're moving into attention a little bit and so you get much less caught up in reactivity. A practical application of this in your life is, never say anything before you've taken one breath. It's a very simple practice--changes the dynamics of conversation with other people completely.“

—  Ken McLeod Canadian lama 1948

Awakening from Belief http://www.unfetteredmind.org/karma-traditional-modern-9b. Unfettered Mind http://www.unfetteredmind.org (2005-06-09) (Topic: Life)

„Nor do I propose to defend the right to talk on a mobile while driving a car, though I don't believe that is necessarily any more dangerous than the many other risky things that people do with their free hands while driving - nose-picking, reading the paper, studying the A-Z, beating the children, and so on.“

—  Boris Johnson British politician, historian and journalist 1964

"To the lady who berated me, I say: on your bike", Daily Telegraph, 1 August 2002, p. 21.
2000s, 2002

„No Man is so much a Fool as not to have Wit enough sometimes to be a Knave; nor any so cunning a Knave, as not to have the Weakness sometimes to play the Fool.“

—  George Savile, 1st Marquess of Halifax English politician 1633 - 1695

Political, Moral, and Miscellaneous Reflections (1750), Moral Thoughts and Reflections

„A love of books, of holding a book, turning its pages, looking at its pictures, and living its fascinating stories goes hand-in-hand with a love of learning.“

—  Laura Bush First Lady of the United States from 2001 to 2009 1946

As quoted in "The Gift of Books" in Biography Today : Profiles of People of Interest to Young Readers, Vol. 12, Issue 2 : Laura Bush by Joanne Mattern (2003), p. 17

„I tend to keep books of art more than anything else now. I'm interested in visual things. And astronomy books. Things you can look at over and over and over again and see something new. … My notions of God and the universe have always been too small. And limited by language. So now I'm looking at picture books. My children say I'm just beginning to enter my dotage: can't read, just looks at picture books.“

—  Robert Fulghum American writer 1937

„Not yesterday I learned to know
The love of bare November days
Before the coming of the snow,
But it were vain to tell her so,
And they are better for her praise.“

—  Robert Frost American poet 1874 - 1963

1910s, My November Guest (1915)

„Who wants to fish, if you're halfway civilised? Dangling some dead meat in front of some poor brainless thing and then pulling him up by a hook in the roof of his mouth? Cruellest thing people do is fish.“

—  John Updike, kniha Rabbit at Rest

Rabbit at Rest (1990)