Quotes & Sayings About Encyclopedias

I once spent a spent a summer selling encyclopedias door to door. — David Liss

There were two sets of encyclopedias that had sections on rats. From them we learned that we were about the most hated animals on earth, except maybe snakes and germs.
That seemed strange to us, and unjust. [...] But people think we spread diseases, and I suppose possibly we do, though never intentionally, and surely we never spread as many diseases as people themselves do. — Robert C. O'Brien

Nothing is important except the fate of the soul; and literature is only redeemed from an utter triviality ... by the fact that it describes not the world around us, or the things on the retina of the eye, or the enormous irrelevancy of encyclopedias, but some condition to which the human spirit can come. — G.K. Chesterton

Wholly new forms of encyclopedias will appear, ready made with a mesh of associative trails running through them, ready to be dropped into the memex and there amplified. — Vannevar Bush

The main thing is to have a soul that loves the truth and harbours it where he finds it. And another thing: truth requires constant repetition, because error is being preached about us all the time, and not only by isolated individuals but by the masses. In the newspapers and encyclopedias, in schools and universities, everywhere error rides high and basks in the consciousness of having the majority on its side. — Johann Wolfgang Von Goethe

Johnny ate encyclopedias like any other kid might eat Red Hots or Lemonheads. — Robert McCammon

It's a big mistake when encyclopedias say "loyal" - this dog, this breed has this ability to be loyal, to be a one person dog. I don't agree with that. I think all dogs are honest, all dogs have integrity, all dogs are loyal and they're all capable of loving you. It doesn't come from the breed. It comes from the dog. — Cesar Millan

He found a set of encyclopedias - like Wikipedia, but paper and very bulky. — Michael Grant

Prodigy
Huge, megalithic corporation seeks a talented, ambitious prodigy to join our exciting dynamic Prodigy Division for summer job. Requirements include at least fourteen years' experience as a certified child prodigy ability to anagram adeptly (and alliterate agilely), fluency in eleven languages. Job duties include reading, remembering encyclopedias, novels, and poetry; and memorizing the first ninety-nine digits of pi.33 — John Green

When I would sell encyclopedias, I would drive down the road looking for a house with a swing set in the back, and I'd say, "Oh, those folks got kids. They need some books." I'd knock on their door and sell them a set of encyclopedias, and those books were from $300 to $600. I'd look around the house, and if there wasn't that much furniture in the house, I felt a little bad about selling a $600 set of books to people who couldn't afford a couch. So I didn't last at that job very long. — Willie Nelson

I grew up in the 'hood around prostitutes, drug dealers, killers, and gangbangers, but I also grew up juxtaposed: On the doorknob outside of our apartment, there was blood from some guy who got shot; but inside, there was National Geographic magazines and encyclopedias and a little library bookshelf situation. — Lupe Fiasco

I think - something I learned recently looking up the meaning of ideology. If you look in American encyclopedias, it says, you know, 'Rules for - basic rules for a system of economics or politics.' If you look in the Oxford, it says that, and then it says ... 'Despite - and people will hold these propositions despite events.' — Mario Cuomo

My travels inevitably begin with copious research and planning. I began this kind of planning long ago when I was very young and anxious to hit the road. Hours were spent pouring over junior encyclopedias memorizing the names of exotic-sounding cities
Addis, Ababa, Samarkand, Damascus. Lengthy lists were written detailing the most minute necessities: three pairs of socks, two pencils. spare batteries, rope. — Barbara Hodgson

History records a great many foolish comments, such as, "it looks perfectly safe," or "Indians? What Indians?" and Dogger added to the list with an old favourite which has caused more encyclopedias and life insurance policies to be sold than you would have thought possible.
"I suppose," he said, "that you'd better come in. — Terry Pratchett

My dad sold encyclopedias and my mom worked in a factory office. — Mike Myers

My mother lived alone in the ruins of the great Library, which was called Compleat, and a very passionate and dashing Library indeed. Under the slightly blackened rafters and more than slightly caved-in walls, my mother lived and read and dreamed, allowing herself to grow closer and closer to Compleat, to notice more and more how fine and straight his shelves remained, despite great structural stress. That sort of moral fortitude is rare in this day and age. By and by, my siblings and I were born and romped on the balconies, raced up and down the splintered ladders, and pored over many encyclopedias and exciting novels. I know just everything about everything - so long as it beings with A through L. — Catherynne M Valente

Are you okay?" she whispers, giggling.
Me? Oh sure. You might have to carry me out of here, though."
What happened?"
I created a distraction."
I gathered that."
Step stool, encyclopedias, floor."
I see. Well, I can't thank you enough."
Sure you can. Help me flunk enough tests, so I drop out of the 'torian range."
Can't you just tell Abernethy that you have a reputation as a dumbshit to keep up, and you don't want the attention?"
Flunking is more fun. — Lisa McMann

That Elvis, man, he is all there is. There ain't no more. Everything starts and ends with him. He wrote the book. But for him, I'd be selling encyclopedias right now. There have been a lotta tough guys. There have been pretenders. And there have been contenders. But there is only one king. — Bruce Springsteen

[My wife] liked to collect old encyclopedias from second-hand bookstores, and at one point we had eight of them. When I wrote my first historical novel
back in 1980, before I was online
I used them often as a research tool. For instance, I learned that the Bastille was either 90 feet high or 100 feet or 120 feet. This led me to formulate Wilson's 22nd Law: 'Certitude belongs exclusively to those who only look in one encyclopedia.' — Robert Anton Wilson

When you know too much information and you acquire it too easily, you tend to either use it in disagreeable ways, out of vanity, or you tend to be indiscriminate about it. I mean, in the old days, it was tricky, you had to go to various encyclopedias, you had to go to the library, maybe spend a day there, whatever. But in the end, if you found something, it was really exciting. Now you hit a couple of buttons and you get some information. Which, by the way, is almost always presented in that same goddamn mediocre style that characterizes the Internet for me. It is slightly deadening. — Norman Mailer

Thank you for your enthusiasm. Earlier today I told another student I was getting new encyclopedias - he asked me how long I'd be in the hospital! — Chris Colfer

Cos if it's encyclopedias we've got enough, like, information ... and if it's God, you've got the wrong house. — Zadie Smith

He had to admit it: he'd missed being engrossed in a case. He even missed the microfiche machines he'd had to use before everything went online, tucked invariably in a corner surrounded by shelves of dusty atlases and encyclopedias. The machines were like old friends to him, the way the knob fit firmly in his hand, the way the text scrolled horizontally across the screen. — Sharon Guskin

Misinformation and disinformation about ritual abuse and mind control trauma and psychotherapy to treat such trauma appear in both paper and electronic media, but are particularly abundant on the Internet on websites of individuals and organizations, bookseller reviews, blogs, newsletters, online encyclopedias, social networking sites, and e-group listservs. — Ellen P. Lacter

Today, information: pulverized, nonhierarchized, dealing with everything: nothing is protected from information and at the same time nothing is open to reflection -> Encyclopedias are impossible -> I would say: the more information grows, the more knowledge retreats and therefore the more decision is partial (terroristic, dogmatic) -> "I don't know," "I refuse to judge": as scandalous as an agrammatical sentence: doesn't belong to the language of the discourse. Variations on the "I don't know." The obligation to "be interested" in everything that is imposed on you by the world: prohibition of noninterest, even if provisional ... — Roland Barthes

Professor Longbottom only assigned us to write about spynuswort because it's one of the three most useful plants in the magical world. If we were to write about every one of its uses, we'd be turning in encyclopedias, you silly boy. — G. Norman Lippert

Here is a fact: nothing in all civilization has been as productive as ludicrous ambition. Whatever its ills, nothing has created more. Cathedrals, sonatas, encyclopedias: love of God was not behind them, nor love of life. But the love of man to be worshiped by man. — Tom Rachman

Driving back to Portland I'd puzzle over my sudden success at selling. I'd been unable to sell encyclopedias, and I'd despised it to boot. I'd been slightly better at selling mutual funds, but I'd felt dead inside. So why was selling shoes so different? Because, I realized, it wasn't selling. I believed in running. I believed that if people got out and ran a few miles every day, the world would be a better place, and I believed these shoes were better to run in. People, sensing my belief, wanted some of that belief for themselves. Belief, I decided. Belief is irresistible. Sometimes — Phil Knight

Encyclopedias are finished. All encyclopedias combined, including the redoubtable Britannica, have already been surpassed by the exercise in groupthink known as Wikipedia. — James Gleick

This was their favorite place to meet. It always felt hidden, forgotten. The gold-lettered World Book encyclopedias from the 1980s. The smell of old glue and crumbling paper, the industrial carpet burning her palms.
It reminded her of what you did when you were a little girl, making little burrows and hideaways. Like boys did with forts. Eli and his friend, stacking sofa cushions, pretending to be sharpshooters. With girls, you didn't call them forts, though it was the same. — Megan Abbott

So, there I was, tied to an altar made from outdated encyclopedias, about to get sacrificed to the dark powers by a cult of evil Librarians. — Brandon Sanderson

Morris tried to keep the books in some sort of order, but they always mixed themselves up. The tragedies needed cheering up and would visit with the comedies. The encyclopedias, weary of facts, would relax with the comic books and fictions. All in all it was an agreeable jumble. — William Joyce

Order, unity, and continuity are human inventions, just as truly as catalogues and encyclopedias. — Bertrand Russell

The Internet gives us everything and forces us to filter it not by the workings of culture, but with our own brains. This risks creating six billion separate encyclopedias, which would prevent any common understanding whatsoever. — Umberto Eco

I was secretly convinced that with such a marvel one would be able to write anything, from novels to encyclopedias, and letters whose supernatural power would surpass any postal limitations
a letter written with that pen would reach the most remote corners of the world, even that unknowable place to which my father said my mother had gone and from where she would never return. — Carlos Ruiz Zafon

My first biography was 'Our Golda: The Life of Golda Meir.' To research that book, I bought a 1905 set of encyclopedias. Those books told me what each of the places Golda Meir lived in were like when she lived there. — David A. Adler

In a sense, words are encyclopedias of ignorance because they freeze perceptions at one moment in history and then insist we continue to use these frozen perceptions when we should be doing better. — Edward De Bono

But it is these four heroes, whom I will discuss from time to time in this book, whose poems, novels, stories, articles, memoirs, and encyclopedias opened my eyes to the soul of the city in which I live. For these four melancholic writers drew their strength from the tensions between the past and the present, or between what Westerners like to call East and West; they are the ones who taught me how to reconcile my love for modern art and western literature with the culture of the city in which I live. — Orhan Pamuk

Elvis is my religion. But for him, I'd be selling encyclopedias right now. — Bruce Springsteen

Useful though they are, the vast majority of dictionaries and encyclopedias are poker-faced pieces of work that stick to the facts and present them as soberly - and unstylishly - as possible. — Terry Teachout

Encyclopedias don't win wars. — Isaac Asimov

People ask me all the time what or who my influences are. To be honest, it would take a decent set of encyclopedias to get them all down. I am here today to let the world know my greatest influence, my secret ingredient, really. What inspires me? That's simple: COFFEE. — Corey Taylor

I grew up in South Africa and I would look at maps and we were at the bottom of the world. There was this whole thing up there. I was always reading encyclopedias about the world. So travel was something I was always attracted to. — Charlize Theron

The tragedy is that there are many walking encyclopedias who are living failures. — Shiv Khera