Unfortunately, humankinds problems may be so profound, and our ability — World Brain

"And for me at any rate this [prediction] is no Utopian dream. It is a forecast, however inaccurate and insufficient, of an absolutely essential part of that world community to which I believe we are driving now .... I have been talking of real intellectual forces and foreshadowing the emergence of a vital reality. I have been talking of something which may even be recognizably in active operation within a lifetime -- or a lifetime or so, from now -- this consciously and deliberately organized brain for all mankind. (pp. 79-80)"

"I refuse to call myself foreign or alien among any people who speak, read and think in English. (p. 174)"

"Thus did Otlet early in the century envisage the kind of encyclopedia the idea of which independently attracted H.G. Wellss interest in those last few fateful years before the outbreak of the Second World War (Rayward, 1992). It was an idea of encyclopedia not greatly dissimilar from that about which Bush was to speculate in the context of memex in the first years of peace following the War."

"The march of the modern and the reconstitution of the worlds knowledge apparatus : H.G. Wells, encyclopedism, and the world brain"

"We do not want dictators, we do not want oligarchic parties or class rule, we want a widespread world intelligence conscious of itself. To work out a way to that world brain organization is therefore our primary need in this age of imperative construction. (p. xvi)"

"The modern World Encyclopaedia should consist of relations, extracts, quotations, very carefully assembled with the approval of outstanding authorities in each subject, carefully collated and edited and critically presented. It would not be a miscellany, but a concentration, a clarification and a synthesis. (p. 20)"