Tony Benn Quotes

Well-run libraries are filled with people because what a good library offers cannot be easily found elsewhere: an indoor public space in which you do not have to buy anything in order to stay.

The public library is a center of public happiness first, of public education next.

There is not such a cradle of democracy upon the earth as the Free Public Library, this republic of letters, where neither rank, office, nor wealth receives the slightest consideration.

The library should be a commonplace to every one. To use it should be as natural when one needs news or knowledge, fiction or fact, as it is to use the trolley when one needs transportation.

Public libraries are the last vestige of public free space.

One of the reasons that I take such joy in being a trustee of the New York Public Library is the love of reading that I found as a child in the Saturday morning library events for preschoolers and first and second graders as I was growing up in Augusta, GA.

I cannot imagine the type of sinister fiend who would be against the library. A library essentially says, 'Look, here is some free information that will enrich your life. Read it on your own time. I trust that you will bring it back when you are finished.' It might be the most civilized, forward-thinking institution in America. Perhaps the only one, in fact.

It reminds me of like this pathetic friend that everybody had when they were a little kid who would let you borrow any of his stuff if you would just be his friend. That's what the library is. A government funded pathetic friend.

A library in the middle of a community is a cross between an emergency exit, a life raft and a festival.

The public library is the most dangerous place in town

For some 25 years, I worked as a librarian, first at the New York Public Library, then at Trenton State College in New Jersey. My life has always been with, around, and for books.

Perhaps no place in any community is so totally democratic as the town library. The only entrance requirement is interest.

A completely free library is as rare as a truly free lunch.

In my view, investing in public libraries is an investment in the nation's future.

My alma mater is the Chicago Public Library.

In our democratic society, the library stands for hope, for learning, for progress, for literacy, for self-improvement and for civic engagement. The library is a symbol of opportunity, citizenship, equality, freedom of speech and freedom of thought, and hence, is a symbol for democracy itself.

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 public library is the great equaliser.

Public libraries are our great teachers and storytellers, and are a vital adjunct to our schools. In this day of standardized and homogenized education, a library offers individual and personalized learning opportunities second to none.

If you get down about the state of American culture, just remember there are still more public libraries in this country than there are McDonalds.

A circulating library in a town is as an evergreen tree of diabolical knowledge.

If you cut funding to libraries, you cut the lifeblood of our communities.

A library is a place that is a repository of information and gives every citizen equal access to it.

Here was one place where I could find out who I was and what I was going to become. And that was the public library.

The library is central to our free society. It is a critical element in the free exchange of information at the heart of our democracy.