A library doesn't need windows. A library is a window.
Interpretation
A library serves as an opening to knowledge and imagination, rather than just a physical space.
In this quote, Stewart Brand emphasizes the idea that a library transcends its physical structure; it is not merely a collection of books but a gateway to new ideas, perspectives, and experiences. By likening a library to a window, he suggests that it offers insight and access to a world of information, fostering intellectual growth and creativity in individuals and society as a whole.
In practice
In a presentation about the importance of education, you could say, 'As Stewart Brand wisely noted, a library isn't just a building; it's a gateway to new worlds.'
On the one hand information wants to be expensive, because it's so valuable. The right information in the right place just changes your life. On the other hand, information wants to be free, because the cost of getting it out is getting lower and lower all the time. So you have these two fighting against each other.
The urgent finds you; you have to find the important. Importance is not fast. It is slow. It is not superficial. It is deep. And as a result, it's extremely powerful. When important matters go wrong, they undermine everything. When they go right, they sustain everything.
Science is the only news. When you scan a news portal or magazine, all the human interest stuff is the same old he-said-she-said, the politics and economics the same cyclical dramas, the fashions a pathetic illusion of newness; even the technology is predictable if you know the science behind it. Human nature doesn't change much; science does, and the change accrues, altering the world irreversibly
We have to allow ourselves the freedom to make mistakes, including cultural mistakes, in our first drafts. I believe it's okay to get cultural details wrong in your first draft. It's okay if stereotypes emerge. It just means that your experience is limited, that you're human.
I think feminist pedagogy should not simply expose students to a particularized academic scholarship but that it should also envision the possibility of activism and struggle outside the academy.
Maybe all wondrous books appear in our lives the way Miloβs tollbooth appears, an inexplicable gift, cast up by some curious chance that comes to feel, after we have finished and fallen in love with the book, like the workings of a secret purpose. Of all the enchantments of beloved books the most mysterious-the most phantasmal-is the way they always seem to come our way precisely when we need them.
Many books that tell you how to achieve come from a privileged position. If you can't see yourself in the advice, how can you use it?
We want the world our children inherit to be defined by the values enshrined in the U.N. Charter: peace, justice, respect, human rights, tolerance, and solidarity.
Women need the education and training, particularly since more and more women are heads of their households, as much or more than anybody else...And it's hard for them to leave their families when they don't have somebody to take care of them....It's a vicious cycle that's affecting women, particularly in a part of the country like this, where mining is the mainstay; traditionally, women have not gone into that line of work, to say the least.
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