Robert Darnton Quotes & Sayings (Page 2)

“As president of the American Historical Association, I started a programme to make dissertations into e-books in 1999. Before I knew it, I was involved in other electronic projects. Harvard invited me to become director of the libraries in 2007.”

“I would not minimize the digital divide, which separates the computerized world from the rest, nor would I underestimate the importance of traditional books.”

“All of us are citizens in a republic much larger than the Republic of America. It is the Republic of Letters, a realm of the mind that extends everywhere, without police, national boundaries, or disciplinary frontiers.”

“People sometimes announce that we have entered 'the information age' as if information did not exist in other times. I think that every age was an age of information, each in its own way and according to the available media.”

“Thanks to modern technology, we now can deliver every text in every research library to every citizen in our country, and to everyone in the world. If we fail to do so, we are not living up to our civic duty.”

“We are living in one of those rare moments in history when things may come apart and be put back together again in ways that will determine the future for decades or more, despite the endless innovations of technology.”

“While confronting the problems of the present, I often find myself thinking back to the world of books as it was experienced by the Founding Fathers and the philosophers of the Enlightenment.”

“I worked for a brief spell as a journalist, but soon I discovered that I didn't want to be a journalist - I wanted to be a historian.”

“The notion of 'history from below' hit the history profession in England very hard around the time I came to Oxford in the early 1960s.”

“The fact that I spend a lot of time in the 18th century doesn't mean I'm not concerned with the 21st.”