I have never thought of myself as a good writer. Anyone who wants reassurance of that should read one of my first drafts. But I'm one of the world's great rewriters.
James A. MichenerRead
Public libraries have been a mainstay of my life. They represent an individual's right to acquire knowledge; they are the sinews that bind civilized societies the world over. Without libraries, I would be a pauper, intellectually and spiritually.
Interpretation
Public libraries are essential for individual knowledge and societal development.
James A. Michener emphasizes the crucial role that public libraries play in providing individuals with access to knowledge and learning. He argues that libraries are fundamental to the cohesion and advancement of civilized societies, and without them, one's intellectual and spiritual growth would be severely impoverished.
In practice
During a speech on the importance of education, one might quote Michener's reflection on libraries.
I have never thought of myself as a good writer. Anyone who wants reassurance of that should read one of my first drafts. But I'm one of the world's great rewriters.
Whenever I start a book, I swear it's going to be a short one. But then it's, 'Who was his grandfather? And how did he get there in the first place? And what kind of animals is he chasing?'
Rampaging horsemen can conquer; only the city can civilize.
I think the crucial thing in the writing career is to find what you want to do and how you fit in. What somebody else does is of no concern whatever except as an interesting variation.
If a man happens to find himself, he has a mansion which he can inhabit with dignity all the days of his life.
I was brought up in the great tradition of the late nineteenth century: that a writer never complains, never explains and never disdains.
Dogma is actually the only thing that cannot be separated from education. It IS education. A teacher who is not dogmatic is simply a teacher who is not teaching. There are no uneducated people; only most people are educated wrong. The true task of culture today is not a task of expansion, but of selection-and-rejection. The educationist must find a creed and teach it.
I believe sanity and realism can be restored to the teaching of Mathematical Statistics most easily and directly by entrusting such teaching largely to men and women who have had personal experience of research in the Natural Sciences.
I went out of my way to play games I didn't like or find interesting. Those ended up being a lot more informative for me. At home, I have literally thousands of games, and I think of them as pearls of wisdom from my predecessors.
I grew up to be indifferent to the distinction between literature and science, which in my teens were simply two languages for experience that I learned together.
I should think I'm going to be a perpetual student.
You can't educate a child who isn't healthy, and you can't keep a child healthy who isn't educated.
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