John Lescroart Quotes

The health of our civilization, the depth of our awareness about the underpinnings of our culture, and our concern for the future can be tested by how well we support out libraries.

The public library system of the United States is worth preserving.

While we can remember the past, we cannot write the future. Only our children, the future of our community, can do that.

Without libraries what have we? We have no past and no future.

In some ways I grew up in the public library in Troy, Michigan.

In Liverpool, where I live, we have a brilliant library which has been refurbished, and I like going there.

Martin Luther was asked, what would you do if tomorrow the world would come to an end, and he said, 'I would plant an apple tree today.' This is a real good answer. I would start shooting a movie.

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.

Books should be cherished, like children, books are for the next generation, like children, like history.

Sometimes it may seem as if progress is stalled but what history of post-war Germany shows is that strength and determination and focus and adherence to the values that we care about will result in a better future for our children and our grandchildren.

A library outranks any other one thing a community can do to benefit its people. It is a never failing spring in the desert.

No," she said firmly. "I want you to stay when I go. Break tradition again, my love, and burn me alone in the home we built. I don't want you with me. You aren't done. You see too far ahead. You need to make the world in your thoughts a real one that our children can fly in." - Matalina to Jenks

All of us should be involved in our own futures to create a world that our children will want to live in.

As fathers, we know what a force for life children can be. They represent all of our futures.

A nation that forgets its past has no future.

It takes a lifetime to build tradition.

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.

Writing is tyranny ... but reading is democracy.

What will happen to us?" I asked. "There will always be us," he answered.

If the legends fall silent, who will teach the children of our ways?

The truth is libraries are raucous clubhouses for free speech, controversy and community.

You and I have a rendezvous with destiny. We will preserve for our children this, the last best hope of man on earth.

Literacy is much more than an educational priority - it is the ultimate investment in the future and the first step towards all the new forms of literacy required in the twenty-first century. We wish to see a century where every child is able to read and to use this skill to gain autonomy.

The public library is the great equaliser.

The world belongs primarily to the dead, and we only rent it from them for a little while. They created it, they wrote its literature and its songs, and they are deeply invested in how children are treated, because the children are the ones who will keep it going. The idea that each of us has the right to change everything is a deep insult to them.