48 Paper Quotes: A Testament to Its Underrated Power

Paper: a seemingly unimportant blank piece of white processed wood that many of us use in our everyday lives without a thought. However, it has a rich history and still impacts the world today. Read the 48 quotes below to enter the fantastic world of paper.

Paper was initially invented in China around two millenniums ago. It took a while, but this invention eventually found its way to Europe, where, in the 1400s, the revolutionary Gutenberg printing press was invented.

This allowed for the significant production of educational, religious, and fiction books. It was now available to the mass population who were lower class, previously illiterate, and uneducated due to inaccessibility to reading material.

With this, more people learned how to read, and this uprising in knowledge contributed heavily to the Renaissance. A split between the new Protestants and Catholics formed as Bibles became readily available to the general population.

Now, of course, we have the internet, but it could be argued that the production of paper on a large scale influenced this broad access to information. Read the following 48 quotes to find out more about paper and its underestimated role in our lives.

Malcolm Gladwell’s quote: "The visionary starts with a clean sheet of paper and re-imagines the world." | Image: AmoDays

Quotes on the Power of Paper

"Who knew paper and ink could be so vicious." — Kathryn Stockett

"Only on paper has humanity yet achieved glory, beauty, truth, knowledge, virtue, and abiding love." — George Bernard Shaw

"A blank page of paper and a pen is the greatest invention. It's so exciting to be confronted by possibility." — Nicky Wire

"A blank piece of paper is God's way of telling us how hard it is to be God." ― Sidney Sheldon

"The visionary starts with a clean sheet of paper and re-imagines the world." — Malcolm Gladwell

Kathryn Stockett’s quote: "Who knew paper and ink could be so vicious." | Image: AmoDays

"Books, after all, are extraordinary things: thoughts made visible, paper and ink sculptures of the mind, time and space made into words. There's no end to judging so many books. But a literary editor's work is never what Ecclesiastes calls a weariness of the flesh. Rather, it's an animation of the spirit." ― Daniel Johnson

"Paper remains the standard to which digital media can only aspire." — Leah Price

Quotes on Paper, Writing, and Art

"These are not books, lumps of lifeless paper, but minds alive on the shelves." — Gilbert Highet

"Writing is easy: All you do is sit staring at a blank sheet of paper until drops of blood form on your forehead." — Gene Fowler

"The artist is a receptacle for emotions that come from all over the place: from the sky, from the earth, from a scrap of paper, from a passing shape, from a spider's web." — Pablo Picasso

Gilbert Highet’s quote: "These are not books, lumps of lifeless paper, but minds alive on the shelves." | Image: AmoDays

"Blank paper always symbolizes the anxiety of the painter." — Claude Picasso

"Writing the perfect paper is a lot like a military operation. It takes discipline, foresight, research, strategy, and, if done right, ends in total victory." — Ryan Holiday

"It is in front of the paper that the artist creates himself." — Stephane Mallarme

"To put what you see on paper is the same as funneling what you feel through yourself as a performer." — Rod Taylor

"Muses are fickle, and many a writer, peering into the voice, has escaped paralysis by ascribing the creative responsibility to a talisman: a lucky charm, a brand of paper, but most often a writing instrument. Am I writing well? Thank my pen. Am I writing badly? Don't blame me; blame my pen. By such displacements does the fearful imagination defend itself." ― Anne Fadiman

Claude Picasso’s quote: "Blank paper always symbolizes the anxiety of the painter." | Image: AmoDays

"Sit and quiet yourself. Luxuriate in a certain memory, and the details will come. Let the images flow. You'll be amazed at what will come out on paper." ― Frank McCourt

"There is a master way with words which is not learned but is instead developed: a deaf man develops exceptional vision, a blind man exceptional hearing, a silent man, when given a piece of paper..." ― Criss Jami

"We are all writers; some of us just don't put our stories on paper." ― Nitya Prakash

"Paper acts as an eraser on the mind, as soon as you look at what you've written." ― Dylan Moran

"Surely it is an odd way to spend your life - sitting alone in a room with a pen in your hand, hour after hour, day after day, year after year, struggling to put words on pieces of paper in order to give birth to what does not exist, except in your head. Why on earth would anyone want to do such a thing? The only answer I have ever been able to come up with is: because you have to because you have no choice." ― Paul Auster

William Wordsworth’s quote: "Fill your paper with the breathings of your heart." | Image: AmoDays

"May I kiss you then? On this miserable paper? I might as well open the window and kiss the night air." — Franz Kafka

"The paper burns, but the words fly free." ― Akiba Ben Joseph

"Spoken word poetry is the art of performance poetry. I tell people it involves creating poetry that doesn't just want to sit on paper, that something about it demands it be heard out loud or witnessed in person." ― Sarah Kay

"Poetry surrounds us everywhere, but putting it on paper is, alas, not so easy as looking at it." ― Vincent Van Gogh

"He loved the idea of paper, how the ink would fade and the paper would age. So finite, he would explain, just like life." ― Maura Milan

Franz Kafka’s quote: "May I kiss you then? On this miserable paper? I might as well open the window and kiss the night air." | Image: AmoDays

"Words mean more than what is set down on paper. It takes the human voice to infuse them with deeper meaning." — Maya Angelou

"Fill your paper with the breathings of your heart." — William Wordsworth

"Sometimes, the only way I know how to work through something is by writing a poem. And sometimes I get to the end of the poem and look back and go, 'Oh, that's what this is all about,' and sometimes I get to the end of the poem and haven't solved anything, but at least I have a new poem out of it." ― Sarah Kay

Though-Provoking Paper Quotes

"Numbers have life; they're not just symbols on paper." ― Shakuntala Devi

"You philosophers are lucky men. You write on paper, and paper is patient. Unfortunate Empress that I am, I write on the susceptible skins of living beings." ― Catherine the Great

D.R. Silva’s quote: "A piece of paper doesn't make you a pastor any more than making predictions makes you a prophet." | Image: AmoDays

"Only government can take perfectly good paper, cover it with perfectly good ink, and make the combination. worthless." ― Milton Friedman

"To say she is only a woman is to say a violin is a piece of wood with strings, and Dante is mere ink printed on paper." ― Bruce Crown

"A piece of paper doesn't make you a pastor any more than making predictions makes you a prophet." — D.R. Silva

"Paper is poverty. It is only the ghost of money, and not money itself." — Thomas Jefferson

"People these days waste a tremendous amount of paper. They waste it because it is of poor quality and is made to be wasted. Or it might be more correctly said that the perception of good paper as a precious commodity has dwindled. But does this careless treatment of paper mean that our lives are any better? No, it is precisely such irresponsible thinking that should be avoided at all costs. Both from a moral and aesthetic point of view, it should be shunned. It lacks any feeling of gratitude or appreciation for one of the blessings of nature." ― Soetsu Yanagi

Maya Angelou’s quote: "Words mean more than what is set down on paper. It takes the human voice to infuse them with deeper meaning." | Image: AmoDays

"It's curious how easy it is to tell a piece of paper what you don't dare say to someone's face." — Carlos Ruiz Zafón

"If they give you ruled paper, write the other way." ― Juan Ramon Jimenez

Paper Quotes Galore

"Paper is to write things down that we need to remember. Our brains are used to think." — Albert Einstein

"I wake up every morning at nine and grab for the morning paper. Then I look at the obituary page. If my name is not on it, I get up." — Benjamin Franklin

"I read the paper every day and the Bible every day; that way, I know what both sides are up to." — Zig Ziglar

Dr. Prem Jagyasi’s quote: "Meditation offers the perfect cure. By helping us let go of our thoughts, it makes our mind as clean and pure as a blank sheet of paper." | Image: AmoDays

"Toilet paper, disinfecting wipes, and bottled water all became COVID-19 gold." ― Steven Magee

"I carry a small sheet of paper in my wallet that has written on it the names of people whose opinions of me matter. To be on that list; you have to love me for my strengths and struggles".— Brene Brown

"Oh, well, faint heart never won so much as a scrap of paper." ― Dorothy L. Sayers

"A piece of paper makes you an officer; a radio makes you a commander." ― General Omar Bradley

Steven Magee’s quote: "Toilet paper, disinfecting wipes, and bottled water all became COVID-19 gold." | Image: AmoDays

“My life looked good on paper, where, in fact, almost all of it was being lived." ― Martin Amis

"Meditation offers the perfect cure. By helping us let go of our thoughts, it makes our mind as clean and pure as a blank sheet of paper." ― Dr. Prem Jagyasi

"Even a broken heart doesn't warrant a waste of good paper." ― Dodie Smith

Nitya Prakash’s quote: "We are all writers; some of us just don't put our stories on paper." | Image: AmoDays

While the paper has played a revolutionary role in society, we know today that concern and alarm continue to grow over the impact it is having on the environment. According to a 2016 article written by Dennis Kempner for the Association for Intelligent Information Management (AIIM), it was recorded that almost half of all the waste in America was paper.

However, as we all know, there are ways to help out and reduce paper waste. These include avoiding the printer unless truly needed, and recycling and saving files on your computer and/or on a cloud, just to name a few. To get your mind off of these negative facts, read 56 magic quotes to believe in the beauty of everyday life.