Professor Faber

Remember, the firemen are rarely necessary. The public itself stopped reading of its own accord.

Those who don't build must burn. It's as old as history and juvenile delinquents.

I don't talk things, sir," said Faber. "I talk the meaning of things. I sit here and know I'm alive.

But remember that the Captain belongs to the most dangerous enemy to truth and freedom, the solid unmoving cattle of the majority. Oh, God, the terrible tyranny of the majority.

We are living in a time when flowers are trying to live on flowers, instead of growing on good rain and black loam. Even fireworks, for all their prettiness, come from the chemistry of the earth. Yet somehow we think we can grow, feeding on flowers and fireworks, without completing the cycle back to reality.

They are so confident that they will run on for ever. But they won't run on. They don't now that this is all one huge big blazing meteor that makes a pretty fire in space, but that someday it'll have to it. They see only the blaze, the pretty fire, as you saw it.

It’s not books you need, it’s some of the things that once were in books. The same things could be in the parlour families today. The same infinite detail and awareness could be projected through the radios and televisors, but are not.