Quotes About Libraries

Crime is the biggest genre in libraries and in bookshops, and it is hugely varied.

I'm an Amazon Prime member. I subscribe to Netflix and Hulu, and they have great user interfaces and some excellent original programs. But what truly distinguishes all three of these services is the utility of their vast libraries of acquired content, which also is a part of what makes each a platform, even if it has a 'house brand,' too.

learn, to make sense of the world around us. As long as we need stories, we will need books, and as long as there are books, there will be libraries.

We use stories to teach, to learn, to make sense of the world around us. As long as we need stories, we will need books, and as long as there are books, there will be libraries.

My work has taken me from historical research to involvement in electronic publishing ventures to the directorship of the Harvard University Libraries.

People question what I thought of Oxford. Students used to talk about the 'Oxford bubble' because the place can make you feel cut off from the rest of the world. I would forget there were places like London that were not centred round libraries and essays.

Libraries keep the records on behalf of all humanity. ... the unique and the absurd, the wise and the fragments of stupidity.

Oh, but how I do miss our lovely city," he sighed. "In Alexandria, there was beauty and learning and tolerance. Here, I see ugly buildings and people who want only to watch the bloody gladiatorial games." He threw up his hands in disgust. "Where are the libraries? Where are the scholars, the poets? This is a place of brutes and beasts, not brains.

Early reading is serendipitous, and rightly so. Gloriously so. Libraries favor serendipity, invite it; the roaming along a shelf, eyeing an unfamiliar name, taking this down, then that--oh, who's this? Never heard of her--give her a go? That is where, and how, you learn affinity and rejection. You find out what you like by exploring what you do not.

We measure the value of a civilized society by the number of Libraries it opens, not the number it closes down.

Libraries are not failing because they are libraries. Neglected libraries get neglected, and this cycle, in time, provides the excuse to close them. Well-run libraries are filled with people because what a good library offers cannot be easily found elsewhere: an indoor public space in which you do not have to buy anything in order to stay.

I don't think the argument in favour of libraries is especially ideological or ethical. I would even agree with those who say it's not especially logical. I think for most people it's emotional. Not logos or ethos but pathos.

Libraries are not failing 'because they are libraries'. Neglected libraries get neglected, and this cycle, in time, provides the excuse to close them. Well-run libraries are filled with people because what a good library offers cannot be easily found elsewhere: an indoor public space in which you do not have to buy anything in order to stay.

It's only recently that I had any idea that how a person felt about libraries—not schools or hospitals, libraries—could even represent an ideological split. I thought a library was one of the few sites where the urge to conserve and the desire to improve—twin poles of our political mind—were easily and naturally united.

When thinking harshly on the human condition, as I so often do, my antidote is to think gently on libraries, for if human beings are capable of preserving the history of our knowledge in the form of books, there there may still be hope.

Exclusively oral cultures are unencumbered by dead knowledge, dead facts. Libraries, on the other hand, are full of them.

No one ever goes to libraries. And they know ALL the good stuff. (Layla Miller)

Libraries are at a cultural crossroads. Some proffer that libraries as we know them may go away altogether, ironic victims of the information age where Google has subverted Dewey decimal and researchers can access anything on a handheld device. Who needs to venture deep into the stacks when answers are but a click away?

Everybody masturbates in libraries. That's what they're for.

Books had become a symbol of trust and libraries places of peace and stability. In all the chaos of the world that counted people as different levels of worthy, the Library served all equally. All genders, races, levels of ability. It was the one place they could all be safe

Libraries are packed with biographies of movie stars and politicians, most of them not capable of as much meaningful self-analysis as you'd get from a toad. We don't need to know more about celebrities' lives, Obadiah. What might help us, what might even save us, is knowing more about the lives of real people who've never made it even medium but who know where they came from and why.

The why of a life could never be solved in this world, although vast libraries of solemn books speculated on the meaning and purpose of existence. Nothing could be known other than the what of any single life: what happened, what actions were taken, what events occurred beyond the person's control, what obvious consequences ensued, what impact for better or worse that one life was seen to have on others.

When I read about the way in which library funds are being cut and cut, I can only think that American society has found one more way to destroy itself.

The works of John Stuart Mill, Herbert Spencer, and Karl Marx had been forbidden. Students' libraries and clubs had been closed; and informers had been planted in the lecture halls. Entry fees had been raised fivefold to bar academic education to children of poor parents.