James H. Billington Quotes

Who was James H. Billington?

James Hadley Billington was an American academic and author. He taught history at Harvard and Princeton.

Billington wrote the book 'Fire in the Minds of Men: Origins of the Revolutionary Faith'.

Born June 1, 1929
Died November 20, 2018
Aged 89 years old

Books by James H. Billington


James H. Billington Sources


Best 6 Quotes by James H. Billington

“At the root of everything lay the passionate desire of thinking people to find a simple, unifying norm for society like the law of gravity that Newton had found for nature.”

“If we didn't already have libraries, they would now have to be invented. They are the keys to American success in fully exploiting the information superhighways of the future.”

“Intellectual and cultural freedom is the most important single precondition for the breakdown of the kinds of tyrannical and totalitarian systems that periodically threaten us.”

“Librarians are not just gatekeepers to knowledge, they are what the American Indians used to call their special sages who preserved the oral legends of a tribe: dream keepers.”

Books and the World Quotes

“Libraries are starting places for the adventure of learning that can go on whatever one's vocation and location in life. Reading is an adventure like that of discovery itself. Libraries are our base camp.”

Books and the World

The Icon and the Axe Quotes

“Nicholas Turgenev in his Russia and the Russians in 1847 eloquently restated the classical enlightened arguments for constitutional monarchy; but this was the voice of an old man writing in Paris.”

The Icon and the Axe

You Might Like

“Affliction comes to us, not to make us sad but sober; not to make us sorry but wise.”


More quotes by H. G. Wells

You Might Like These Related Authors

James H. Billington Sources