Quotes About Libraries

If you want to write ... You must lurk in libraries and climb the stacks like ladders to sniff books like perfumes and wear books like hats upon your crazy heads.

I don't believe in colleges and universities. I believe in libraries because most students don't have any money. When I graduated from high school, it was during the Depression and we had no money. I couldn't go to college, so I went to the library three days a week for 10 years.

I don't believe in colleges and universities. I believe in libraries because most students don't have any money. When I graduated from high school, it was during the Depression and we had no money. I couldn't go to college, so I went to the library three days a week for 10 years.

No matter where you are on the political spectrum, libraries make sense. It's such a small investment. Every dollar supporting a library system returns five dollars to the community.

In the most egalitarian of European—and New Mexican—traditions, forests were public commons in which common people could roam, graze flocks, hunt and gather, and this is another way that forests when they are public land and public libraries are alike: as spaces in which everyone is welcome, as places in which we can wander and collect, get lost and find what we're looking for.

The earth is seven-tenths water, but the ratio of silence to voice is far greater. If libraries hold all the stories that have been told, there are ghost libraries of all the stories that have not. The ghosts outnumber the books by some unimaginably vast sum.

The purpose of a lecture should not be to impart information. There are books, libraries, nowadays the internet, for that. A lecture should inspire and provoke thought.

There is no access to contemporary poetry in the libraries.

Heroes to me are guys that sit in libraries. They absorb knowledge and then the risks they take are calculated on the basis of the courage it took to become replete with knowledge.

When we run over libraries, persuaded of these principles, what havoc must we make? If we take in our hand any volume; of divinity or school metaphysics, for instance; let us ask, Does it contain any abstract reasoning concerning quantity or number? No. Does it contain any experimental reasoning concerning matter of fact and existence? No. Commit it then to the flames: for it can contain nothing but sophistry and illusion.

Before long, public libraries had stopped lending books, gauze face masks had become regular attire, and people had stopped shaking hands.

I hate libraries for the way they put stickers on things. I don't approve of folding over pages, or of writing in books. God, forget scissors - that's beyond the pale.

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

The very existence of libraries affords the best evidence that we may yet have hope for the future of man

I see libraries and librarians as frontline soldiers in the war against illiteracy and the lack of imagination.

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

Libraries are like houses of worship: Whether or not you use them yourself, it's important to know that they are there. In many ways they define a society and the values of that society. Librarians to me are the keepers of the flame of knowledge. When I was growing up, the librarian in my local library looked like a meek little old lady, but after you spent some time with her, you realized she was Athena with a sword, a wise and wonderful repository of wisdom.

Ethan's love of nature did not take the form of a taste for agriculture. He had always wanted to be an engineer, and to live in towns, where there were lectures and big libraries and "fellows doing things.

We can imagine the books we'd like to read, even if they have not yet been written, and we can imagine libraries full of books we would like to possess, even if they are well beyond our reach, because we enjoy dreaming up a library that reflects every one of our interests and every one of our foibles--a library that, in its variety and complexity, fully reflects the reader we are.

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

I write in public libraries and sometimes coffee shops. I can't write at home and gave up trying long ago. I need activity around me that I'm forced to block out. It helps me focus.

I don't want to see libraries close; I want to find local solutions that will make them sustainable.

some libraries are no longer called libraries but are known as Learning Resource Centers or Media Centers. Librarians, however, are still generally known as librarians and not yet as Learning Resourcists or Media Centerists, though this may be only a matter of time.

It is possible that librarians will be robots, controlled by Master Minds having mastery of a master computer at the Library of Congress. Or there will be no libraries and librarians, flesh-and-blood or otherwise. The onetime library patron will press a button and turn a dial on his TV, whereupon the requested book, in the desired language, will appear on the screen, the pages turning at the designated speed.