LIBRARY QUOTES II
quotations about libraries
A library is the door to many lives.
SHARON CREECH
NYLA Bulletin, October/November 2001
I received the fundamentals of my education in school, but that was not enough. My real education, the superstructure, the details, the true architecture, I got out of the public library. For an impoverished child whose family could not afford to buy books, the library was the open door to wonder and achievement, and I can never be sufficiently grateful that I had the wit to charge through that door and make the most of it. Now, when I read constantly about the way in which library funds are being cut and cut, I can only think that the door is closing and that American society has found one more way to destroy itself.
ISAAC ASIMOV
I. Asimov: A Memoir
A truly great library contains something in it to offend everyone.
JO GODWIN
attributed, The Librarian's Book of Quotes
The main function of a library is the collection and preservation of knowledge for its dissemination to all.
R. S. KHOCHAR
Modern Cataloguing
The function of a great library is to store obscure books.
NICHOLSON BAKER
New Yorker, Apr. 4, 1994
No place affords a more striking conviction of the vanity of human hopes than a public library; for who can see the wall crowded on every side by mighty volumes, the works of laborious meditation and accurate enquiry, now scarcely known but by the catalogue, and preserved only to increase the pomp of learning, without considering how many hours have been wasted in vain endeavours, how often imagination has anticipated the praises of futurity, how many statues have risen to the eye of vanity, how many ideal converts have elevated zeal, how often wit has exulted in the eternal infamy of his antagonists, and dogmatism has delighted in the gradual advances of his authority, the immutability of his decrees, and the perpetuity of his power.
SAMUEL JOHNSON
The Rambler, Mar. 23, 1751
Libraries can be an indispensable service in lifting the dead weight of poverty and ignorance.
FRANCIS KEPPEL
address at ALA Annual Conference, 1964
A library is much more than books. A library needs to have room for people.
SUE DOWDELL
"Request revives talks of new library", My Citizen's News, May 28, 2016
That place that does contain
My books, the best companions, is to me
A glorious court, where hourly I converse
With the old sages and philosophers.
BEAUMONT & FLETCHER
The Elder Brother
Don't join the book burners. Don't think you're going to conceal faults by concealing evidence that they never existed. Don't be afraid to go in your library and read every book.
DWIGHT D. EISENHOWER
Commencement Address at Dartmouth College, 1953
We have this image that libraries are about nouns but they are about verbs. So, it's not books. It is reading. Every day and every way libraries are throwing pebbles and we don't know what that pebble is going to do but there is a ripple effect.
STEPHAN ABRAM
"Libraries need to embrace change to remain vital", Guelph Today, June 12, 2016
Libraries are about freedom. Freedom to read, freedom of ideas, freedom of communication. They are about education (which is not a process that finishes the day we leave school or university), about entertainment, about making safe spaces, and about access to information. I worry that here in the 21st century people misunderstand what libraries are and the purpose of them. If you perceive a library as a shelf of books, it may seem antiquated or outdated in a world in which most, but not all, books in print exist digitally. But that is to miss the point fundamentally.
NEIL GAIMAN
The Guardian, Oct. 15, 2013
Consider what you have in the smallest chosen library; a company of the wisest and wittiest men that could be picked out of all civil countries, in a thousand years, have set in best order the results of their learning.
RALPH WALDO EMERSON
In Praise of Books: A Vade Mecum for Book-lovers
Libraries are about the only free public spaces left in our society where you're not a consumer, pressured to buy something.
SANDRA SINGH
"There's A Good Reason Canadians Won't Give Up Their Libraries", Huffington Post, June 6, 2016
A library is the easiest place to mislay a book, and the worst place to try to find it again.
TIM SEVERIN
In Search of Robinson Crusoe
Not too long ago, I was spoon-feeding my nephew baby porridge, when I overheard a piece on the breakfast news about libraries. My ears perked up. Like every author, I feel a seeing-red-rage rise up inside me each time I hear about the library cuts. I looked up. A spokesperson from the Institute of Economic Affairs began their spiel. I gave my nephew another a spoonful of porridge. I listened. I missed my nephew's mouth with the spoon. I started making outrage-noises; they sounded not unlike a snorting pig mixed up with a pot of boiling water. My nephew grabbed his porridge spoon. I grabbed my laptop and started typing out the words that I was hearing. They seemed so ludicrous that I thought I'd heard them wrong. Your average library doesn't come close to having as much information as the Internet. And coffee shops have the internet. We don't need libraries anymore -- you can [buy] books online instead for literally pennies! My nephew covered himself in porridge: eyebrows, nose, most of forehead, a lot of his fluffy hair too. The breakfast news slid onto its next story, in that compartmentalizing way it has, and we were left reeling, porridge-splattered and screaming.
POLLY HO-YEN
"The internet and coffee shops are no replacement for libraries", The Guardian, June 10, 2016
Communities require focal points, and local libraries are a brilliant example of what that means in practice. Library buildings are centres for community information and venues for book clubs and other gatherings, as well as repositories of books and digital material. They're cross-generational spaces serving groups and individuals from childhood to old age. They offer a portal to other libraries and resources via the internet. And if you're isolated, housebound or suffering from ... lack of consistent broadband, their mobile library services provide physical links to the mother ships which can change people's lives.
FELICITY HAYES-MCCOY
"The Library at the Edge of the World author: libraries are a community's heart", The Irish Times, June 8, 2016
If you want to get laid, go to college. If you want an education, go to the library.
FRANK ZAPPA
attributed, College Is for Suckers
A library is a precious catacomb, wherein are embalmed and preserved imperishably the great minds of the dead who will never die.
CHATFIELD
attributed, Day's Collacon
Shelved around us lie
The mummied authors.
BAYARD TAYLOR
The Poet's Journal, Third Evening