A library doesn't need windows. A library is a window.
Interpretation
A library serves as an opening to knowledge and imagination, rather than just a physical space.
In this quote, Stewart Brand emphasizes the idea that a library transcends its physical structure; it is not merely a collection of books but a gateway to new ideas, perspectives, and experiences. By likening a library to a window, he suggests that it offers insight and access to a world of information, fostering intellectual growth and creativity in individuals and society as a whole.
In practice
In a presentation about the importance of education, you could say, 'As Stewart Brand wisely noted, a library isn't just a building; it's a gateway to new worlds.'
On the one hand information wants to be expensive, because it's so valuable. The right information in the right place just changes your life. On the other hand, information wants to be free, because the cost of getting it out is getting lower and lower all the time. So you have these two fighting against each other.
The urgent finds you; you have to find the important. Importance is not fast. It is slow. It is not superficial. It is deep. And as a result, it's extremely powerful. When important matters go wrong, they undermine everything. When they go right, they sustain everything.
Science is the only news. When you scan a news portal or magazine, all the human interest stuff is the same old he-said-she-said, the politics and economics the same cyclical dramas, the fashions a pathetic illusion of newness; even the technology is predictable if you know the science behind it. Human nature doesn't change much; science does, and the change accrues, altering the world irreversibly
I refuse to accept that the world is so poor, when just one week of global spending on armies is enough to bring all of our children into classrooms.
We can say with some assurance that, although children may be the victims of fate, they will not be the victims of our neglect.
Every literate woman is a victory over poverty
The higher education system in these countries (US, Korea etc) has become like a theatre in which some people decided to stand to get a better view, promoting the others behind them to stand. Once enough people stand, everyone has to stand, which means no one is getting a better view, while everyone has become more uncomfortable.
I worked in a number of high schools in New York, and I wound up at Stuyvesant High School, which is known nationally for producing brilliant scientists and mathematicians, but I had writing classes. I thought I was teaching. They thought I was teaching, but I was learning.
Young men and women, your education is ever important - to us, to you, and to God.
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