Libraries Quotes

A popular government, without popular information, or the means of acquiring it is but a prologue to a farce or a tragedy; or perhaps both ... And a people who mean to be their own governors, must arm themselves with the power that knowledge gives.

Whatever the cost of our libraries is, it is cheap compared to the cost of an ignorant nation.

For a person who grew up in the '30s and '40s in the segregated South, with so many doors closed without explanation to me, libraries and books said, 'Here I am, read me.' Over time I have learned I am at my best around books.

They will form citizens, heroes and geniuses.

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

Organize all the world’s information and make it universally accessible whatever the consequences

The more one reads, the more one sees that one has to read.

While most of the world's information is beginning to be stored electronically, most of the world's expertise still resides in books.

Books are finished.

U. S. A. is the slice of a continent. U. S. A. is a group of holding companies, some aggregations of trade unions, a set of laws bound in calf, a radio network, a chain of moving picture theaters, a column of stock quotations …a public library full of old newspapers and dog-eared history books with protests scrawled on the margins in pencil. U. S. A. is the world’s greatest river valley fringed with mountains and hills, U. S. A. is a set of big-mouthed officials with too many bank accounts. U. S. A is a lot of men buried in their uniforms in Arlington Cemetery. U. S. A. is the letters at the end of the address when you are away from home. But mostly U. S. A. is the speech of the people.

There is that romanticized idea of what a bookstore can be, what a library can be, what a shop can be. And to me, they are that. These are places that open doors into other worlds if only you're open to them.

The love of libraries, like most loves, must be learned.

Libraries are the vessels in which the seed corn for the future is stored.

Federal money should not be used to give kids access to dirty peep shows.

Libraries are the thin red line between civilization and barbarism.

There's nobody for me to attack in this matter even with soft and gentle ridicule--and I shouldn't ever think of using a grown up weapon in this kind of a nursery. Above all, I couldn't venture to attack the clergymen whom you mention, for I have their habits and live in the same glass house which they are occupying. I am always reading immoral books on the sly, and then selfishly trying to prevent other people from having the same wicked good time.

Libraries change lives. They are the soul of a people.

I love libraries, as anyone who has a brain does.

I was a bookworm in school, and in those days it was easy to get books. Bigger cities had book shops.

I've always loved books.

I understood right from the start that every set of library doors were the sort of magic portals that lead to other lands. My God, right within reach there were dinosaurs and planets and presidents and girl detectives!

For thousands and thousands of American kids, libraries are the only safe place they can find to study, a haven free from the dangers of street or the numbing temptations of television. As schools cut back services, the library looms even more important to countless children.

Libraries can in general be too narrow or too wide for the soul.

I am a librarian. I discovered me in the library. I went to find me in the library. Before I fell in love with libraries, I was just a six-year-old boy. The library fueled all of my curiosities, from dinosaurs to ancient Egypt. When I graduated from high school in 1938, I began going to the library three nights a week. I did this every week for almost ten years and finally, in 1947, around the time I got married, I figured I was done. So I graduated from the library when I was twenty-seven. I discovered that the library is the real school.

libraries are fascinating places: sometimes you feel you are under the canopy of a railway station, and when you read books about exotic places there's a feeling of travelling to distant lands