The Greatest Obstacle To Discovery Is Not

The Force Of The Advertising Word And Image Dwarfs The Power Of Other Literature In The 20th Century.

We Suffer Primarily Not From Our Vices Or Our Weaknesses, But From Our Illusions. We Are Haunted, Not By Reality, But By Those Images We Have Put In Their Place.

[the Library Of Congress] Is A Multimedia Encyclopedia. These Are The Tentacles Of A Nation. [referring To The Diverse Holdings Of The Library, Including Motion Pictures, Photographs, Recordings, Posters And Other Historic Objects Which Collectively Far Outnumber The Books]

Our American Past Always Speaks To Us With Two Voices: The Voice Of The Past, And The Voice Of The Present. We Are Always Asking Two Quite Different Questions. Historians Reading The Words Of John Winthrop Usually Ask, What Did They Mean To Him? Citizens Ask, What Do They Mean To Us? Historians Are Trained To Seek The Original Meaning; All Of Us Want To Know The Present Meaning.

In Our World Of Big Names, Curiously, Our True Heroes Tend To Be Anonymous. In This Life Of Illusion And Quasi-illusion, The Person Of Solid Virtues Who Can Be Admired For Something More Substantial Than His Well-knownness Often Proves To Be The Unsung Hero: The Teacher, The Nurse, The Mother, The Honest Cop, The Hard Worker At Lonely, Underpaid, Unglamorous, Unpublicized Jobs.