Billy Connolly Quotes

With a library you are free, not confined by temporary political climates. It is the most democratic of institutions because no one — but no one at all — can tell you what to read and when and how.

I've read too many books to believe what I am told.

Read a lot - poems, prose, stories, newspapers, anything. Read books and poems that you think you will like and some that you think might not be for you. You might be surprised.

I can walk into a bookshop and point out a number of books that I find very unattractive in what they say. But it doesn't occur to me to burn the bookshop down. If you don't like a book, read another book. If you start reading a book and you decide you don't like it, nobody is telling you to finish it.

I never stop reading. I read everything, and I read every day. If you never read anything, be curious. Curiosity is the true foundation of education, reading things that we've factually already agreed on, and I love reading books. With that said, it's more important that you ask the question 'why.'

He has left off reading altogether, to the great improvement of his originality.

Unanimity of opinion may be fitting for a church, for the frightened or greedy victims of some (ancient, or modern) myth, or for the weak and willing followers of some tyrant. Variety of opinion is necessary for objective knowledge. And a method that encourages variety is also the only method that is comparable with a humanitarian outlook.

Books are not made to be believed, but to be subjected to inquiry. When we consider a book, we mustn't ask ourselves what it says but what it means.

Here you discover that so long as books are kept open, then minds can never be closed.

Never trust people who've only got one book.

With science and reason throughout history, what people believed turned out to be false. So I like to keep an open mind to all perspectives and learn and become more fully realised as a person. I just feel we're never going to know what the full picture is.

A liberal mind is a mind that is able to imagine itself believing anything.

I'm not quite pompous enough to think of myself as an educator or a man capable of definitive refutation of falsehoods.

A library implies an act of faith.

The improver of natural knowledge absolutely refuses to acknowledge authority, as such. For him, skepticism is the highest of duties; blind faith the one unpardonable sin.

Doubt grows with knowledge.

I think well-read people - the world is open to them.

I read books like mad, but I am careful to to let anything I read influence me.

If one knows only what one is told, one does not know enough to be able to arrive at a well-balanced decision.

Large skepticism leads to large understanding. Small skepticism leads to small understanding. No skepticism leads to no understanding.

I love to doubt as well as know.

The ability to perceive or think differently is more important than the knowledge gained.

The virtues of science are skepticism and independence of thought.

Books teach children to see the world through the eyes of others and empathise with others. It's about the story.

It is important that students bring a certain …, irreverence to their studies; they are not here to worship what is known, but to question it.