[B]ooks are the carriers of civilization. Without books, history is
silent, literature dumb, science crippled, thought and speculation at a
standstill. Without books, the development of civilization would have
been impossible. They are engines of change, windows on the world, and
(as a poet has said) "lighthouses erected in the sea of time." They are
companions, teachers, magicians, bankers of the treasures of the mind.
Books are humanity in print.
-- Barbara W.
Tuchman.
"
The book"
: a lecture sponsored by the Center for the Book in the Library of
Congress and the Authors' League of America, presented at the Library of
Congress October 17, 1979; with an introd. by John Hersey. Washington :
Library of Congress, 1980.
http://hdl.handle.net/2027/uc1.c027013515