Books Quote by Jorge Luis Borges
““When it was proclaimed that the Library contained all books, the first impression was one of extravagant happiness. All men felt themselves to be the masters of an intact and secret treasure. There was no personal or world problem whose eloquent solution did not exist in some hexagon. The universe was justified, the universe suddenly usurped the unlimited dimensions of hope. At that time a great deal was said about the Vindications: books of apology and prophecy which vindicated for all time the acts of every man in the universe and retained prodigious arcana for his future. Thousands of the greedy abandoned their sweet native hexagons and rushed up the stairways, urged on by the vain intention of finding their Vindication. These pilgrims disputed in the narrow corridors, proffered dark curses, strangled each other on the divine stairways, flung the deceptive books into the air shafts, met their death cast down in a similar fashion by the inhabitants of remote regions. Others went mad ... The Vindications exist (I have seen two which refer to persons of the future, to persons who are perhaps not imaginary) but the searchers did not remember that the possibility of a man's finding his Vindication, or some treacherous variation thereof, can be computed as zero.””
About This Quote
Source Short story: “The Book of Sand” (or similar Borges work), 1975
A society obsessed with a library that claims to hold all knowledge leads to chaos, illustrating the danger of believing absolute truth exists.
In simple terms: Blind faith in total knowledge causes ruin.
Question the limits of knowledge and its impact.
Themes
Mood
Type
When to use this quote
- academic research
- spiritual quests
- technological pursuits
Key Concepts
Questions to Reflect On
- What happens when we seek absolute certainty?
- How do we handle the unknown?
Assuming all answers exist can blind us to reality.