Popular quotes about Library! Wisdom and inspiration are here! | page 7
I was so inspired by Dr. King that in 1956 with my brothers and sisters and first cousins, I was only 16 years old, we went down to the public library trying to check out some books and we were told by the librarian that the library was for whites only and not for colors! It was a public library! I never went back to that public library until July 5th, 1998, by this time I'm in the Congress, for a book signing of my book "Walking with the Wind"
John LewisOne time, the Library of Congress was giving books to local libraries around the country on Islam. The library of a guy named Walter Jones, who's a member of Congress from North Carolina, got some books and resource materials, and he got up in the press and said he didn't want any Muslim books in the library. And the people said, "Wait a minute, that's kind of anti-Muslim." He said, "Oh no, Keith Ellison is a friend of mine." And I said, "You know what? We are friends, but you're wrong about this.
Keith EllisonThe point of a library's existence is not persuasion or evangelism, but knowledge. It is irrelevant to the good library whether, as an institution, it shares or promotes your core values or mine, or the Attorney General's or Saddam Hussein's. The library is always an instrument of choice, and the choice is always yours, not your elected or designated leaders.
Robert HughesI've got a vendetta to destroy the Net, to make everyone go to the library. I love the organic thing of pen and paper, ink on canvas. I love going down to the library, the feel and smell of books.
Joseph FiennesThey say there is no 'free lunch' in life. But there are free books! I still can't believe I can go to my local library and get just abut any book in the world - and I don't have to pay a dime!! It's amazing! The library is truly the greatest invention of our civilization.
Dan GutmanIn my school, the library was forbidden. I was accused of turning on the radiator so that the [class]room was uninhabitable and the ceiling came down below; I'm pretty sure I didn't do it. But then we were moved to the library. And there was a really boring history thing, about the Spanish Armada: how could you make that boring?!So I reached my hand out, and slid a book off to read under the desk, and it opened at King Lear Act Four Scene Six. I was astounded. I'd never seen language like it. I was awestruck. I think that may be one reason why I got involved in theatre.
Keith JohnstoneCongratulations on the new library, because it isn't just a library. It is a space ship that will take you to the farthest reaches of the Universe, a time machine that will take you to the far past and the far future, a teacher that knows more than any human being, a friend that will amuse you and console you-and most of all, a gateway, to a better and happier and more useful life.
Isaac AsimovI grew up in rural Tennessee. There were no bookstores in the town, but the school had a little library and the town had a little library, each with a patient and enthusiastic librarian, and I raced into both as if they were doorways to another world.
Michael SimsA library is a place where you can live a thousand lives. So why are you waiting when you could be living? Visit your library today.
Stephen KingThe Library is an open sanctuary. It is devoted to individual intellectual inquiry and contemplation. Its function is to provide free access to ideas and information. It is a haven of privacy, a source of both cultural and intellectual sustenance for the individual reader. Since it is thus committed to free and open inquiry on a personal basis, the Library must remain open, with access to it always guaranteed.
Robert G. VosperEverything you need for your better future and success has already been written.And guess What? It's all available.All you have to do is go to the library.But guess what?Only three percent of the people in America have a library card.Wow,they must be expensive!No, they're free.Probably in every neighborhood.Three percent!
Jim RohnIn a library, you can find small miracles and truth, and you might find something that will make you laugh so hard that you will get shushed, in the friendliest way. I have found sanctuary in libraries my whole life, and there is sanctuary there now, from the war, from the storms of our families and our own minds. Libraries are like mountains or meadows or creeks: sacred space. So this afternoon, I'll walk to the library.
Anne LamottI think the public library system is one of the most amazing American institutions. Free for everybody. If you ever get the blues about the status of American culture there are still more public libraries than there are McDonald's. During the worst of the Depression not one public library closed their doors.
David McCulloughRecords can be destroyed if they do not suit the prejudices of ruling cliques, lost if they become incomprehensible, distorted if a copyist wishes to impose a new meaning upon them, misunderstood if we lack the information to interpret them. The past is like a huge library, mostly fiction.
Henry FordMadam, a circulating library in a town is as an evergreen tree of diabolical knowledge; it blossoms through the year. And depend on it that they who are so fond of handling the leaves, will long for the fruit at last.
Richard Brinsley SheridanThere's no excuse for having a mental or creative block in sound. You can just go out and collect things in the real world - they make the sound, not you. It's very restricting to always use a library for sound effects. It's much more interesting and freeing to go out and record new sounds because you never know what you're going to get.
Gary RydstromWhen a child is born, I once explained to the kids, some dads lay down bottles of wine for them that will mature when they grow up into ungrateful adults. Instead, what you're going to get from me, as each of you turns sixteen, is a library of the one hundred books that gave me the most pleasure when I was a know-nothing adolescent.
Mordecai RichlerIt stinks of trains and that chili with the chocolate in it. Ooooh, books!" he exclaimed suddenly, making a beeline for the small library. (Al)
Kim HarrisonKnowing I lov'd my books, he furnish'd me From mine own library with volumes that I prize above my dukedom.
William ShakespeareThere is humanist enterprise of the book, and amongst that there are many, many stories. And that is why at the end, when he says that the stories are so illuminating that they must be engraved and encased in gold and put in the palace library, the people who compile the book are telling us that this is a collection of human wisdom.
Marina WarnerMaking love to Aurelia was like rummaging through a card catalog in a deserted library, searching for one very obscure, little-read entry on Hungarian poetry.
Marisha PesslThe women one meets - what are they but books one has already read? You're a library of the unknown, the uncut. Upon my word I've a subscription.
Henry JamesOne teacher told me that my work belonged in the trash. That day I ran out of the classroom and ended up in the library, where there happened to be a black and white photography exhibition of Robert Rauschenberg's photographs of the streets of New York. The subject of his photos were exactly what I was painting about.
Jose ParlaI didn't think about being king,โ he said, his voice hoarse. Eddis stared. โYour capacity to land yourself in a mess because you didn't think first, Eugenides, will never cease to amaze me. What do you mean you didn't think about being king? Is Attolia going to marry you and move into my library?
Megan Whalen TurnerWhen it comes to the Federal Reserve, there's an awful lot of books out there; in my library, I bet I've got 200 books if I've got any on the Federal Reserve. And we don't need any more books, we need action, and that's what the Liberty Dollar did, it gave people a way to take action. Our catch phrase was you want to "make money, do good, and have fun," and people really responded to that.
Bernard von NotHausShe went out and took a last long look at the shabby little library. She knew she would never see it again. Eyes changed after they looked at new things. If in the years to be she were to come back, her new eyes might make everything seem different from the way she saw it now. The way it was now was the way she wanted to remember it.
Betty SmithOne summer I was homeless in L.A., when I was about fifteen, and I used to go to the library to get books. I would have books in abandoned cars, in the seats, cubby holes on the L.A. River, just to have books wherever I could keep them, I just loved to have books. And that really helped me. I didn't realize it was going to be my destiny; I didn't know I was going to be a writer.
Luis J. RodriguezThe Bible became the book of books, but it is not one document. It is a mystical library of interwoven texts by unknown authors who wrote and edited at different times with widely divergent aims. This sacred work of so many epochs and so many hands contains some facts of provable history, some stories of unprovable myth, some poetry of soaring beauty, and many passages of unintelligible, perhaps coded, perhaps simply mistranslated, mystery. Most of it is written not to recount events but to promote a higher truthโthe relationship of one people and their God.
Simon Sebag-MontefioreNobody recognizes that a bookstore or library can also be a drowning polar bear. And in this country [US], magazines, newspapers, and bookstores are drowning polar bears. And if people can't see that or don't want to talk about it, I don't understand them at all.
Sherman AlexieDo not use intoxicants of any sort. We who should be serving the world should not ruin our health by smoking and drinking. The money we waste on these things can be used for so many useful things. With the money we smoke away, we can buy an artificial leg for one who has lost a leg, pay for an eye operation for someone with a cataract, or buy a wheelchair for a polio victim. Or, if nothing else, we can buy some spiritual books for the local library.
Mata AmritanandamayiBooks have always been my home. I ransacked the library regularly from the time we moved to the States. I read on the fire escape. I read at the dinner table. I read late into the night in my room. This unhindered foraging and feasting on books - away from controlling, condemning eyes - empowered me to identify and resist misogyny, xenophobia, shadism, and other forms of injustice.
Mitali PerkinsWhile the average person is home watching TV, the Leader Without a Title is in the gym getting stronger or at the library getting smarter or at the office getting better (or with their family growing kinder). Make this day count.
Robin SharmaAs a shy, introverted, scholarly child (long ago) I don't know what I would have done without libraries! My family moved often. I was always the new kid in town. The library always offered me my first and most important friendship: the place where I felt right at home. I still feel that way today, about libraries.
Lois LowryI used to think that when I grew up there wouldn't be so many rules. Back in elementary school there were rules about what entrance you used in the morning, what door you used going home, when you could talk in the library, how many paper towels you could use in the rest room, and how many drinks of water you could get during recess. And there was always somebody watching to make sure. What I'm finding out about growing older is that there are just as many rules about lots of things, but there's nobody watching.
Phyllis Reynolds NaylorA library is many things, but particularly it is a place where books live, and where you can get in touch with other people, and other thoughts, through books... Books hold most of the secrets of the world, most of the thoughts that men and women have had.
E. B. WhiteOrdered by subject, by importance, ordered according to whether the book was penned by God or by one of God's creatures, ordered alphabetically or by numbers or by the language in which the text is written, every library translates the chaos of discovery and creation into a structured system of hierarchies or a rampage of free associations.
Alberto ManguelI have written 240 books on a wide variety of topics. . . . Some of it I based on education I received in my school, but most of it was backed by other ways of learning - chiefly in the books I obtained in the public library.
Isaac AsimovI feel, holding books, accommodating their weight and breathing their dust, an abiding love. I trust them, in a way that I can't trust my computer, though I couldn't do without it. Books are matter. My books matter. What would I have done through these years without the library and all its lovely books?
Lori LansensWhat I tell kids is don't get mad (about censorship) get even. Run, don't walk, to the first library you can find, and read what they're trying to keep out of your eyes. Read what they're trying to keep out of your brains. Because that's exactly what you need to know.
Stephen KingI used singing as a safety measure. I would pay attention to what songs the popular girls liked, learn those songs from the radio or library cassettes, and then "accidentally" sing or hum these songs in class. This would impress the girls, who would then defend me from the boys.
Vivek ShrayaI am unpacking my library. Yes I am. The books are not yet on the shelves, not yet touched by the mild boredom of order.
Walter BenjaminFirst time I ever took acid and got really high, as I was walking around I thought "Gee. The world looked like this when I was a little kid." I remember seeing the sparkling reality and three-dimensionality of things. Sort of like a renewal, every time you do it is a renewal, it is a renewal. It keeps your head young. It lets you keep that being able to accept the new thing just as easily as a kid would. Most people get all this stuff in their head like an old library, no room for the new volume to go on the shelves.
Owsley StanleyDo not be guilty of possessing a library of learned books while lacking learning yourself.
Desiderius ErasmusLike all those possessing a library, Aurelian was aware that he was guilty of not knowing his in its entirety.
Jorge Luis BorgesNorwich is a fine city. None finer. If there is another city in the United Kingdom with a school of painters named after it, a matchless modern art gallery, a university with a reputation for literary excellence which can boast Booker Prize-winning alumni, one of the grandest Romanesque cathedrals in the world, and an extraordinary new state-of-the-art library then I have yet to hear of it.
Stephen FryIf you want to be a writer, you should go into the largest library you can find and stand there contemplating the books that have been written. Then you should ask yourself, 'Do I really have anything to add?' If you have the arrogance or the humility to say yes, you will know you have the vocation.
Margaret Atwood