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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’
What a school thinks about its library is a measure of what it feels about education. Harold Howe
A university is just a group of buildings gathered around a library. Shelby Foote
My alma mater was books, a good library ... I could spend the rest of my life reading, just satisfying my curiosity. Malcolm X
Cram your head with characters and stories. Abuse your library privileges. Never stop looking at the world, and never stop reading to find out what sense other people have made of it. If people give you a hard time and tell you to get your nose out of a book, tell them you’re working. Tell them it’s research. Tell them to pipe down and leave you alone. Jennifer Weiner
And on the subject of burning books: I want to congratulate librarians, not famous for their physical strength or their powerful political connections or their great wealth, who, all over this country, have staunchly resisted anti-democratic bullies who have tried to remove certain books from their shelves, and have refused to reveal to thought police the names of persons who have checked out those titles.
So the America I loved still exists, if not in the White House or the Supreme Court or the Senate or the House of Representatives or the media. The America I love still exists at the front desks of our public libraries. Kurt Vonnegut, A Man Without a Country
All the books we own, both read and unread, are the fullest expression of self we have at our disposal ... But with each passing year, and with each whimsical purchase, our libraries become more and more able to articulate who we are, whether we read the books or not. Nick Hornby, The Polysyllabic Spree
Never lend books, for no-one ever returns them; the only books I have in my library are books that other folks have lent me. Anatole France
If this nation is to be wise as well as strong, if we are to achieve our destiny, then we need more new ideas for more wise men reading more good books in more public libraries. These libraries should be open to all – except the censor. We must know all the facts and hear all the alternatives and listen to all the criticisms. Let us welcome controversial books and controversial authors. For the Bill of Rights is the guardian of our security as well as our liberty. John F Kennedy
‘But we’re a university! We have to have a library!’ said Ridcully. ‘It adds tone. What sort of people would we be if we didn’t go into the library?’
‘Students,’ said Senior Wrangler morosely. Terry Pratchett, The Last Continent
So he said, ‘I’m going to chop off the bottom of one of your trouser legs and put it in a library’. I thought, That’s a turn-up for the books. Tommy Cooper
Fourteen centuries have learned,
From charred remains, that what took place
When Alexandria’s library burned
Brain-damaged the human race. Ted Hughes, Hear It Again, 1997
No place affords a more striking conviction of the vanity of human hopes than a public library. Samuel Johnson, cited The Rambler March 1751
If these writings of the Greeks agree with the book of God, they are useless and need not be preserved; if they disagree, they are pernicious and ought to be destroyed. Omar, Muslim caliph, re burning of Library of Alexandria c.641 A.D.
Madam, a circulating library in a town is as an evergreen tree of diabolical knowledge; it blossoms throughout the year. And depend on it ... that they who are so fond of handling the leaves, will long for the fruit at last. Richard Brinsley Sheridan, The Rivals, Sir Anthony
The smell of the library was always the same – the musty odour of old clothes mixed with the keener scent of unwashed bodies, creating what the chief librarian had once described as the steam of the social soup. Peter Ackroyd
I have always imagined that Paradise will be a kind of library. Jorge Luis Borges
Let heaven exist, though my own place may be in hell. Let me be tortured and battered and annihilated, but let there be one instant, one creature, wherein thy enormous Library may find its justification. Jorge Luis Borges
I declare after all there is no enjoyment like reading! How much sooner one tires of any thing than of a book! – When I have a house of my own, I shall be miserable if I have not an excellent library. Jane Austen, Pride and Prejudice
The world is quiet here. Lemony Snicket
The very existence of libraries affords the best evidence that we may yet have hope for the future of man. T S Eliot
It was good to walk into a library again; it smelled like home. Elizabeth Kostova, The Historian
I couldn’t live a week without a private library – indeed, I’d part with all my furniture and squat and sleep on the floor before I’d let go of the 1,500 or so books I possess. H P Lovecraft
The only thing that you absolutely have to know is the location of the library. Albert Einstein
What in the world would we do without our libraries? Katharine Hepburn
A public library is the most democratic thing in the world. What can be found there has undone dictators and tyrants: demagogues can persecute writers and tell them what to write as much as they like, but they cannot vanish what has been written in the past, though they try often enough ... People who love literature have at least part of their minds immune from indoctrination. If you read, you can learn to think for yourself. Doris Lessing
We may sit in our library and yet be in all quarters of the earth. John Lubbock
Your library is your paradise. Desiderius Erasmus Roterodamus
Libraries store the energy that fuels the imagination. They open up windows to the world and inspire us to explore and achieve, and contribute to improving our quality of life. Libraries change lives for the better. Sidney Sheldon
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. Alberto Manguel, The Library at Night