Johannes Gutenberg

“Gutenberg-Museum Mainz, Germany – English homepage”

“If Gutenberg were alive today, he would recognize the physical book and know how to operate it immediately. Given how much change there has been everywhere else, what's remarkable is how stable the book has been for so long. But no technology, not even one as elegant as the book, lasts forever.”

“All the world acknowledges that the invention of Gutenberg is the greatest event that secular history has recorded...Gutenberg's achievement created a new and wonderful earth, but at the same time also a new hell. During the past 500 years Gutenberg's invention has supplied both earth and hell with new occurrences, new wonders and new phases.”

“God suffers in the great multitudes whom his sacred word cannot reach. Religious truth is captive in a small number of manuscript books, which guard the common treasure, instead of diffusing it. Let us break the seal which holds the holy things; give 10 wings to the truth, that by means of speech, no longer written at great expense by the hand that wearies itself, but multiplied as the air by an unwearied machine, it may fly to seek every soul born into the world!”