Librarian is a service occupation. Gas station attendant of the mind. – Richard Powers
Science is not about control. It is about cultivating a perpetual condition of wonder in the face of something that forever grows one step richer and subtler than our latest theory about it. It is about reverence, not mastery. – Richard Powers
What we can do should never by itself determine what we choose to do, yet this is the way technology tends to work. – Richard Powers
I think that if the novels task is to describe where we find ourselves and how we live now, the novelist must take a good, hard look at the most central facts of contemporary life – technology and science. – Richard Powers
Every man should have a library. The works of the grandest masters of literature may now be procured at prices that place them within the reach almost of the very poorest, and we may all put Parnassian singing birds into our chambers to cheer us with the sweetness of their songs. – William E.A. Axon, October 1867