Popular quotes about Libraries! Wisdom and inspiration are here!
One potential long-term problem with many current digital libraries is that they grew out of and aresupported by bricks-and-mortar libraries. Although there is nothing inherently wrong with that arrangement, inreality it creates a potentially dangerous situation that I call "the other digital divide."
Tom PetersLibraries' most powerful asset is the conversation they provide - between books and readers, between children and parents, between individuals and the collective world. Take them away and those voices turn inwards or vanish. Turns out that libraries have nothing at all to do with silence.
Bella BathurstChildren have to have access to books, and a lot of children can't go to a store and buy a book. We need not only our public libraries to be funded properly and staffed properly, but our school libraries. Many children can't get to a public library, and the only library they have is a school library.
Katherine PatersonLibraries are the torch of the world, illuminating the path when it feels too dark to see. We mustn't allow that torch to be extinguished.
Libba BrayOnce the government can demand of a publisher the names of the purchasers of his publication, the free press as we know it disappears. Then the spectre of a government agent will look over the shoulder of everyone who reads. ... Fear of criticism goes with every person into the bookstall. The subtle, imponderable pressures of the orthodox lay hold. Some will fear to read what is unpopular, what the powers-that-be dislike. ... fear will take the place of freedom in the libraries, book stores, and homes in the land.
William O. DouglasThere is something so deeply visceral about libraries for me-rooms and rooms full of people dreaming and remembering.
Jacqueline WoodsonI care about a lot of issues. I care about libraries, I care about healthcare, I care about homelessness and unemployment. I care about net neutrality and the steady erosion of our liberties both online and off. I care about the rich/poor divide and the rise of corporate business.
Sara SheridanAs it is she will probably turn out to be one of these acid-faced virgins that sit behind little desks in public libraries and stamp dates in books.
Raymond ChandlerIn tight economic times, with libraries sliding farther and farther down the list of priorities, we risk the loss of their ideals, intelligence, and knowledge, not to mention their commitment to access for allโlibrarians consider free access to information the foundation of democracy, and theyโre right. Librarians are essential players in the information revolution because they level that field. They enable those without money or education to read and learn the same things as the billionaire and the Ph.DโฆIn tough times, a librarian is a terrible thing to waste.
Marilyn JohnsonI learned more about history and literature in the used bookstores in DC than in college libraries.
Douglas BrinkleyI don't think that there has been a film that I've done that hasn't been influenced by libraries and archives.
Ken BurnsI do a lot of research for my books. I can't possibly know all the things I write about and I love learning new things. I spend hours and hours doing research in books, libraries and online. [Once] I traveled to the reservation to get the settings and the flavor of the place down right.
Linda ConradWe can imagine the books we'd like to read, even if they have not yet been written, and we can imagine libraries full of books we would like to possess, even if they are well beyond our reacher, because we enjoy dreaming up a library that reflects every one of our interests and every one of our foibles--a library that, in its variety and complexity, fully reflects the reader we are.
Alberto ManguelHistoric figures have homes to visit for posterity; the Lord of history left no home. Luminaries leave libraries and write their memoirs; He left one book, penned by ordinary people. Deliverers speak of winning through might and conquest; He spoke of a place in the heart.
Ravi ZachariasI feel sorry for kids nowadays, because in the majority of schools across the country, the arts have been eliminated from the curriculum. There's no art; there's no music. In some cases they've taken away the libraries. They don't do theater. And these are the things that speak to the human soul.
David SmallAt the 1894 ALA conference it was fairly well agreed that the primary goal of the public library must be to teach good citizenship. Libraries recognized that such "Americanization" could be achieved through literacy. Thus, teaching immigrants to read was not just a benefit in and of itself; literacy would also serve the interests of democracy.
Kevin MattsonI see libraries and librarians as frontline soldiers in the war against illiteracy and the lack of imagination.
Neil GaimanSolitary converse with nature; for thence are ejaculated sweet and dreadful words never uttered in libraries. Ah! the spring days, the summer dawns, and October woods!
Ralph Waldo EmersonOur libraries are not cloisters for an elite. They are for the people, and if they are not used, the fault belongs to those who do not take advantage of their wealth.
Louis L'AmourI always feel a certain sense of reverence in libraries, even small city ones that smell like homeless internet users.
Ken JenningsWhen I was a child in the Navy during World War II, I was perennially grateful to the armed services libraries for having on hand a good supply of those pocket books, which were so common in that period. I must have read a couple hundred of them, and they did a lot to save my sanity.
James A. MichenerWe'll always need printed books that don't mutate the way digital books do; we'll always need places to display books, auditoriums for book talks, circles for story time; we'll always need brick-and-mortar libraries.
Marilyn JohnsonI think that it's not enough to do the little Band-Aid things of having celebrities come and read to children. Not that we don't need to read to children, but we don't need to just do it one time and feel good about it. I think we need to think long range about poor people and their relationship to libraries.
Sandra CisnerosI recall that I had a terrible struggle finding anything antireligious in the school libraries.But many years later my family moved into a house where a woman had left a box of books containing 20 volumes on the history of the Inquisition. I found out there was a word for people like me: "heretic." I was kind of delighted to find I had an identity.
Madalyn Murray O'HairFor me, closing libraries is the equivalent of eating your seed corn to save a little money.
Neil GaimanThe pride and presence of a professional football team is far more important than 30 libraries.
Art ModellI'm a big researcher. I love libraries and archives and I have a huge National Geographiccollection. I have a good amount of books and records, and I'm on the Internet. I think research yields a lot and can help you pull different discordant works that may not be harmonious. Through time and with patience and focus, you bring them all together.
Xaviera SimmonsI used to stand in front of the mirror in my bedroom. I shared a bedroom - like a lot of people in my era, in my neighborhood - with my two brothers and an uncle. And I'd stand there in front of the mirror over the dresser and I would practice: meek young men grow up in libraries, believing it their duty to accept the views of Cicero, Bacon and Baba.
Joe BidenLibraries are what is best about us as a society: open, exciting, rich, informative, free, inclusive, engaging.
Susan OrleanThe justices have constitutionally protected obscenity in libraries, filth over cable television, and now unlimited internet pornography.
Phyllis SchlaflyI collect books, and I love libraries. I love bookstores. And to me meeting a writer is important. And when I saw a book with my name on it I almost passed out.
Angelina JolieLibraries should be open to all - except the censor. [Response to questionnaire in Saturday Review, October 29 1960]
John F. KennedyYou must not count much upon what I can do or learn in New York.... Everything there disappoints me but the crowd; rather, I was disappointed with the rest before I came. I have no eyes for their churches, and what else they find to brag of. Though I know but little about Boston, yet what attracts me, in a quiet way, seems much meaner and more pretending than there,--libraries, pictures, and faces in the street. You don't know where any respectability inhabits.
Henry David ThoreauTo a historian libraries are food, shelter, and even muse. They are of two kinds: the library of published material, books, pamphlets, periodicals, and the archive of unpublished papers and documents.
Barbara TuchmanI read," I say. "I study and read. I bet I've read everything you read. Don't think I haven't. I consume libraries. I wear out spines and ROM-drives. I do things like get in a taxi and say, "The library, and step on it." My instincts concerning syntax and mechanics are better than your own, I can tell, with all due respect. But it transcends the mechanics. I'm not a machine. I feel and believe. I have opinions. Some of them are interesting. I could, if you'd let me, talk and talk.
David Foster WallaceFor thousands and thousands of American kids, libraries are the only safe place they can find to study, a haven free from the dangers of street or the numbing temptations of television. As schools cut back services, the library looms even more important to countless children.
Scott TurowBooks are becoming everything to me. If I had at this moment any choice in life, I would bury myself in one of those immense libraries...and never pass a waking hour without a book before me.
Thomas B. MacaulayI will protect your tax money! It won't be spent on Prime Minister and Governor houses. InshALLAH the day PTI government comes in power these walls of governor houses will be brought down. We will break these walls and make libraries and playgrounds for the public to use
Imran KhanSpies go to bars for the same reason people go to libraries: full of information if you know where to ask.
Michael WestonLibraries never let us forget who we are, for their worth stands by the knowledge they keep and save for us.
Virginia Hamilton