“If information were passed on merely by word of mouth, how little we should know of our own past, how slow would be our progress. Everything would depend on what we had been told, on how accurate the account. Ancient learning might be revered, but in successive retellings it would become muddled and then lost.

Books permit us to voyage through time - to tap the wisdom of our ancestors. A library connects us with the insights and knowledge of the greatest minds and the best teachers drawn from the whole planet and from all our history to instruct us without tiring; and to inspire us to make our own contributions to the collective knowledge of the human species.”

Books are like seeds; they can lie dormant for centuries but they may also produce flowers in the most unpromising soil.”

Carl Sagan - Cosmos: A Personal Voyage; ‘The Persistance of Memory’