When I read about the way in which library funds are being cut and cut, I can only think that American society has found one more way to destroy itself.
Interpretation
Asimov highlights the detrimental effects of reducing library funding on society's growth and knowledge.
Isaac Asimov expresses his concern over the continuous cuts to library funding, implying that this trend reflects a broader societal neglect for education and knowledge. He suggests that by undermining libraries, society is inadvertently paving its own path to decline, as libraries serve as essential sources of information, learning, and community engagement that are fundamental to a civilized society.
In practice
During a town hall meeting discussing budget cuts, one might quote Asimov to advocate for maintaining library funding.
Democracy cannot survive overpopulation. Human dignity cannot survive it. Convenience and decency cannot survive it. As you put more and more people into the world, the value of life not only declines, but it disappears. It doesn't matter if someone dies.
Science does not promise absolute truth, nor does it consider that such a thing necessarily exists. Science does not even promise that everything in the Universe is amenable to the scientific process.
Democracy cannot survive overpopulation.
Although the time of death is approaching me, I am not afraid of dying and going to Hell or (what would be considerably worse) going to the popularized version of Heaven. I expect death to be nothingness and, for removing me from all possible fears of death, I am thankful to atheism.
A subtle thought that is in error may yet give rise to fruitful inquiry that can establish truths of great value.
During the century after Newton, it was still possible for a man of unusual attainments to master all fields of scientific knowledge. But by 1800, this had become entirely impracticable.
Being a librarian certainly helped me with my writing because it made me even more of a reader, and I was always an enthusiastic reader. Writing and reading seem to me to be different aspects of a single imaginative act.
To have a vision of the cosmic plan, in which every form of life depends on directed movements which have effects beyond their conscious aim, is to understand the child's work and be able to guide it better.
Children have real understanding only of that which they invent themselves, and each time that we try to teach them too quickly, we keep them from reinventing it themselves.
Books and all forms of writing are terror to those who wish to suppress the truth.
From the simplest lyric to the most complex novel and densest drama, literature is asking us to pay attention. Pay attention to the frog. Pay attention to the west wind. Pay attention to the boy on the raft, the lady in the tower, the old man on the train. In sum, pay attention to the world and all that dwells therein and thereby learn at last to pay attention to yourself and all that dwells therein.
You must find time for reading, or surrender yourself to self-chosen ignorance.
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