. . . Americans Are The Best

A Book Is An Attempt To Make Through Permanent And To Contribute To The Great Conversation Conducted By Authors Of The Past. […] The Telegraph Is Suited Only To The Flashing Of Messages, Each To Be Quickly Replaced By A More Up-to-date Message. Facts Push Other Facts Into And Then Out Of Consciousness At Speeds That Neither Permit Nor Require Evaluation. (70)

Once You Have Learned To Ask Questions - Relevant And Appropriate And Substantial Questions - You Have Learned How To Learn And No One Can Keep You From Learning Whatever You Want Or Need To Know.

People Like Ourselves May See Nothing Wondrous In Writing, But Our Anthropologists Know How Strange And Magical It Appears To A Purely Oral People - A Conversation With No One And Yet With Everyone. What Could Be Stranger Than The Silence One Encounters When Addressing A Question To A Text? What Could Be More Metaphysically Puzzling Than Addressing An Unseen Audience, As Every Writer Of Books Must Do? And Correcting Oneself Because One Knows That An Unknown Reader Will Disapprove Or Misunderstand?

As A Culture Moves From Orality To Writing To Printing To Televising, Its Ideas Of Truth Move With It.

Textbooks, It Seems To Me, Are Enemies Of Education, Instruments For Promoting Dogmatism And Trivial Learning. They May Save The Teacher Some Trouble, But The Trouble They Inflict On The Minds Of Students Is A Blight And A Curse.