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Quote by Sven Birkerts

Work

The Gutenberg Elegies: The Fate of Reading in an Electronic Age

This book delves into the changing landscape of reading habits in the context of the digital age, examining the effects of electronic devices on the experience of reading. more

Author

Sven Birkerts
Sven Birkerts

Sven Birkerts, born on September 21, 1951, is an American essayist known for his profound literary analysis and critical thinking, which has had a significant impact on contemporary literature and culture. more

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“The phrase 'Sense of the Earth' should be understood to mean the passionate concern for our common destiny which draws the thinking part of life ever further onward. The only truly natural and real human unity is the spirit of the Earth. . . .The sense of Earth is the irresistable pressure which will come at the right moment to unite them (humankind) in a common passion.The Age of Nations is past. The task before us now, if we would not perish, is to build the Earth.”

“It is not our heads or our bodies which we must bring together, but our hearts. . . . Humanity. . . is building its composite brain beneath our eyes. May it not be that tomorrow, through the logical and biological deepening of the movement drawing it together, it will find its heart, without which the ultimate wholeness of its power of unification can never be achieved?”

“My starting point is the fundamental initial fact that each one of us is perforce linked by all the material organic and psychic strands of his being to all that surrounds him. . . . If we look far enough back in the depths of time, the disordered anthill of living beings suddenly, for an informed observer, arranges itself in long files that make their way by various paths towards greater consciousness.”