40 Quotes by Robert Bringhurst

If you divide the world into them and us, and history into ours and theirs, or if you think of history as something only you and your affiliates possess, then no matter what you know, no matter how noble your intentions, you have taken one step toward the destruction of the world.

Wings are a constraint that makes it possible to fly.

Literature in the written sense represents the triumph of language over writing: the subversion of writing for purposes that have little or nothing to do with social and economic control.

If language is lost, humanity is lost. If writing is lost, certain kinds of civilization and society are lost, but many other kinds remain - and there is no reason to think that those alternatives are inferior.

When you die, your culture takes you in, and then, if you've given enough, your place is near the centre.

An ancient metaphor: thought is a thread, and the raconteur is a spinner of yarns - but the true storyteller, the poet, is a weaver.

Typography is the craft of endowing human language with a durable visual form.

Type designers are, at their best, the Stradivarii of literature: not merely makers of salable products, but artists who design and make the instruments that other artists use.

Typography must often draw attention to itself before it will be read. Yet in order to be read, it must relinquish the attention it has drawn.