Quotes About Libraries

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

Libraries never let us forget who we are, for their worth stands by the knowledge they keep and save for us.

Move north. Reach the border. Find a coyote. Get across. Take a bus to Denver. There will be churches there. Libraries, internet access, immigrant communities. People willing to help. For now just move north, move north. Get Luca out of danger.

Humane people don't start revolutions, they start libraries. And cemeteries.

The means of pressure on publishers were considerable,59 including the purging of public libraries and the publication of lists of undesirable authors,60 whose works had then to be withdrawn from circulation.61 Ever fuller lists of books prohibited from sale were published by the Börsenblatt.

Libraries function as crucial technology hubs, not merely for free Web access, but those who need computer training and assistance. Library business centers help support entrepreneurship and retraining.

There is a canyon within a reasonable distance of nearly every school in the city," [Elaine Brooks] pointed out. What an exciting prospect, she said - a network of natural libraries for teaching children about the region's rare and fragile ecosystems - and about themselves.

But still, how could they write whole libraries about someone like Kant and hardly even notice Taylor-that prophet who could see ten centuries ahead?

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.

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

Learning sleeps and snores in libraries, but wisdom is everywhere, wide awake, on tiptoe.

One cannot celebrate books sufficiently. After saying his best, still something better remains to be spoken in their praise. As with friends, one finds new beauties at every interview, and would stay long in the presence of those choice companions. As with friends, he may dispense with a wide acquaintance. Few and choice. The richest minds need not large libraries.

Those who read many books are like the eaters of hashish. They live in a dream. The subtle poison that penetrates their brain renders them insensible to the real world and makes them prey of terrible or de lightful phantoms. Books are the opium of the Occident. They devour us. A day is coming on which we shall all be keepers of libraries, and that will be the end.

Now, many public libraries want to lend e-books, not simply to patrons who come in to download, but to anybody with a reading device, a library card and an Internet connection. In this new reality, the only incentive to buy, rather than borrow, an e-book is the fact that the lent copy vanishes after a couple of weeks.

I applied for funding to embark on an overseas field trip in Iceland, and spent six weeks there happily holed up in the national archives, museums and libraries, sifting through ministerial and parish records, censuses, maps, microfilm, logs, and local histories.

In my ideal world, my next novel would have a first printing of, say, 2,500 hardcovers for reviewers, libraries, collectors, and autograph hounds. The publisher could print more copies if they get low. And simultaneously, or six weeks later, the book would be available in paperback.

The age of Lincoln and Jefferson memorials is over. It will be presidential libraries from now on.

Full federal funding for presidential libraries should bring with it new rules of control over papers and artifacts.

I have encountered those who feel that libraries have served their purpose and are no longer needed. There are those who consider them a soft target when it comes to local authority budget cuts. In certain political quarters, there is a refusal to see that our public library service needs active protection.

Colleges at Oxford and Cambridge often sent their promising young fellows abroad to buy books for their libraries (which were tiny; it was thought a great achievement during Savile's time at Merton that he increased their number of printed books from 300 to 1,000), and in 1578 Savile was sent out on a long European tour.

Cloisters, ancient libraries ... I was confusing learning with the smell of cold stone.

Libraries have to be local, they have to be handy. They shouldn't need an expedition. But that early period in a child's reading life is vital. Interfere with that, hinder a child's access to books in whatever form and you damage that child probably for life. I have said it many times already but it's worth saying again: closing libraries is child abuse. Enough ranting.

Books and stories are lifelines, and libraries house those lifelines, making them available to all. They are important not just for the books, but for the space and freedom they provide, as well as the navigation and advice provided by librarians.

That's what libraries were for: to make sure that everybody had the same access to the same books everyone else did.