Tom Peters Quotes

The Internet is a clear example of how our lives have changed in ways we couldn't have imagined: a distributed information source, which is invisible to everyone, where you can access anything, and it's distributed throughout the whole world. Basically, communication is instantaneous.

Because nearly all digital libraries are tied to bricks-and-mortar institutions, the funding base tends to be quite localized.

Most young dealers of the Silicon Chip Era regard a reference library as merely a waste of space. Old Timers on the West Coast seem to retain a fondness for reference books that goes beyond the practical. Everything there is to know about a given volume may be only a click away, but there are still a few of us who'd rather have the book than the click. A bookman's love of books is a love of books, not merely of the information in them.

I'd be happy if I could think that the role of the library was sustained and even enhanced in the age of the computer.

I am full of admiration for the technologists who have developed all sorts of gadgets for the purpose of improving communications. However, I believe that all these fascinating machines are complementary to, and not substitutes for, books and the printed word.

We've spent the last 30 years focusing on the T in IT, and we'll spend the next 30 years focusing on the I.

Libraries are a hallmark of a civilized culture, and librarians represent that culture to all facets of society.

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

Public libraries are the last vestige of public free space.

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

Without the library, you have no civilization.

In crisis times, it's actually not more difficult to motivate your staff, because everyone gets much more focused on how they control their own economic destiny. So, what you do is you have clear communication, which is always a good leadership technique, and you talk about how you can build something good and strong in the future, and how you can work together in order to do that.

The Internet is merely a new means of communication, that's all it is. It serves the purpose of getting information, which it is fantastic at. I mean, I live by the Internet in terms of research and it's incredible - there's nothing that you can't find out about. It's not stopped me going to bookshops but I must say that I don't go into as many because any book I want.

Mobile phones are misnamed. They should be called gateways to human knowledge.

If you do not value libraries then you do not value information or culture or wisdom. You are silencing the voices of the past and you are damaging the future.

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.

One of the most subversive institutions in the United States is the public library.

Go anywhere you wish, talk to everyone. Ask any questions; you will be given answers. When you want to learn, you will be taught. Use the library. Open any book.

You don't need 70 people in a White House press conference to tell people what happened there. You need a camera and maybe a couple reporters, and that's it.

Libraries really are the gates to the future.

Anyway -- because we are readers, we don't have to wait for some communications executive to decide what we should think about next -- and how we should think about it. We can fill our heads with anything from aardvarks to zucchinis -- at any time of night or day.

Nothing is more impotent than an unread library.

Libraries are fun, educational, and the biggest bargain on the face of the earth.

Books can accommodate the proximity of computers but it doesn't seem to work the other way around. Computers now literally drive out books from the place that should, by definition, be books' own home: the library.

Information and communications technology unlocks the value of time, allowing and enabling multi-tasking, multi-channels, multi-this and multi-that.