i-TFTD #280: Rent. Read. Return.

To celebrate the opening of the first branch of Just Books, a successful chain of libraries in Bangalore, in Nerul, Navi Mumbai, by my better half, here is a bonus edition of i-TFTD with quotes on books and reading.

(Yes, the above is a not-so-subtle plug, please inform all your acquaintances and do drop by on a weekend between 9:00 AM and 9:00 PM. Navigate using this Google maps link. As you can see from the photos, there are thousands of new fiction, non-fiction and young readers' books to browse.)

#280-1. Books are the compasses and telescopes and sextants and charts which other men have prepared to help us navigate the dangerous seas of human life.
-Jesse Lee Bennett

#280-2. If you do not have the time to read, you do not have the time to lead.
-Phillip Schlechty

#280-3. Not to know is bad, not to wish to know is worse.
-Nigerian Proverb

#280-4. Read, every day, something no one else is reading. Think, every day, something no one else is thinking. Do, every day, something no one else would be silly enough to do. It is bad for the mind to be always part of unanimity.
-Christopher Morley

(Thanks to Atul Kahate for sharing this.)

#280-5. Successful people have libraries. The rest have big screen TVs.
-Jim Rohn

(Thanks to Shuja Rahman for sharing this.)

#280-6. Be an explorer... read, surf the internet, visit customers, enjoy arts, watch children play... do anything to prevent yourself from becoming a prisoner of your knowledge, experience, and current view of the world.
-Charles 'Chic' Thompson in 'What a Great Idea'

#280-7. A complacent satisfaction with present knowledge is the chief bar to the pursuit of knowledge.
-Sir Basil Henry Liddell Hart in 'The Ghost of Napoleon'

#280-8. Knowledge is of two kinds. We know a subject ourselves, or we know where we can find information on it.
-Samuel Johnson

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When talking about books and reading, some people retort, "Reading is not going to help" or, "You cannot learn this from books!" Other than a few rare situations, such statements are pointless and even dangerous. One can substitute anything in the place of "reading", like, "Talking is not going to help" and "Thinking is not..." What one learns from reading is one kind of knowledge, there are many other useful kinds that one has to learn through other methods. Look at any person who has had a positive impact and you will find they are readers and often give credit for their success to something they read.

Not everyone can buy lots of books, not all books worth reading are worth buying, which is why, it has been one of my childhood dreams to open a library—a place where many people can benefit from access to the treasure trove of distilled experience from around the world. While I continued to periodically imagine about ! doing such a thing in future, my wife, the person who is most evidently different from me, who disagrees with me on most topics, just went ahead and started one, right under my nose. Delicious irony?