...From the first half of the 20th century until today, my life has unfolded in a significant historical period for our country, following the Asia Minor catastrophe and the terrible consequences for the Hellenism of Asia Minor, the refugee crisis of over a million Greeks to the motherland. National division, dictatorships, World War II, Greco-Italian War, occupation of Greece by the German-Italian forces, national resistance, civil war, dictatorship of the colonels, and finally, the restoration of democracy in 1974 after the occupation of 38% of Cyprus by Turkish troops, all these years I experienced in this turbulent and tumultuous situation for the homeland. I fought as a student for survival and education, but also for resistance against the conquerors. This patriotic stance of mine, with the new order of things that was established after the defeat of the resistance forces with the intervention of foreigners, was rewarded with imprisonments, exiles, and mockery by the collaborators of the Germans...

Since 1952, I dedicated myself to the service of quality books and for about sixty years, I fought for free and democratic education, for a modern democratic education for all children without exclusions, for more and more people to enter bookstores, for young people to love books from the early years of their lives because I believed that only through the study of good books would my country progress and its people would be masters in their land, in the place where humanistic civilization was born...