Elizabeth Gilbert Quotes

Shout for libraries. Shout for the young readers who use them.

Every library is an arsenal.

The rules have changed. True power is held by the person who possesses the largest bookshelf, not gun cabinet or wallet.

Today a reader, tomorrow a leader.

Books are the greatest weapons against the assholes of the world.

Freedmen have the natural thirst for knowledge, aspire to power and influence… coupled with learning, and are excited by the special study of books.

What in the world would we do without our libraries?

[On libraries] What's great about them is that anybody can go into them and find a book and borrow it free of charge and read it. They don't have to steal it from a bookshop... You know when you're young, you're growing up, they're almost sexually exciting places because books are powerhouses of knowledge, and therefore they're kind of slightly dark and dangerous. You see books that kind of make you go 'Oh!'

Freedom is found through the portals of our nation's libraries.

I don’t think people realise how vital libraries are or what a colossal danger it would be if we were to lose any more. Having had a truncated school life myself, all of my education from the age of 17 has been self-taught. I wouldn’t be the person I am today if it wasn’t for the opportunities the library gave me.

Schools and libraries are the twin cornerstones of a civilized society. Libraries are only good if people use them, like books only exist when someone reads them.

Hungry man, reach for the book: it is a weapon.

Men of power have no time to read; yet the men who do not read are unfit for power.

Knowledge is not just power - it is control.

Books stay with me and have shaped me and made huge impacts on my life.

The best advice I ever got was that knowledge is power and to keep reading.

Knowledge is power.

If there's a 13- or 14-year old kid who is yearning for something beyond the social forces in his own world, in his own neighborhood, the library is the only place where he can go to find that. It was exciting and thrilling to me all the time I worked in the library. It's such a force for social good and it can do so much.

You know, you don't expect everyone to be as educated as everyone else or have the same achievements, but you expect at least to be offered at least some of the opportunities, and libraries are the most simple and the most open way to give people access to books.

I believe in the power of ideas, I believe in the power of books, but you have to give them time.

Knowledge is the most democratic source of power.

Books were my window on the world. Growing up at the Elephant and Castle, which was very rough, my paradise was the library.

I count myself as one of millions of Americans whose life simply would not be the same without the libraries that supported my learning.

Libraries raised me.

The world isn't one way or another. Things can be changed very, very rapidly by someone with sufficient confidence, sufficient knowledge and sufficient authority.