Libraries keep the records on behalf of all humanity. the unique and the absurd, the wise and the fragments of stupidity.

One of my greatest sources of pride as president of the New York Public Library is the continuance of the library's open, free, and democratic posture, the fact that we are here for Everyman, that we are indeed Everyman's university, the place where the scholar who is not college-affiliated can come and work and feel at home.

The book is here to stay. What we're doing is symbolic of the peaceful coexistence of the book and the computer.

Everybody is somebody, so you don't have to introduce anybody.

Libraries and museums are the DNA of our culture.

It meant that New York philanthropists, New York society, would now rediscover the library. ... that learning, books, education have glamour, that self-improvement has glamour, that hope has glamour.

The only condition a library asks its users to honor is to do justice to their own imagination, their own curiosity and their own thirst for knowledge, and in the process, to achieve their own independence of mind and spirit.