Libraries Quotes

“In a good bookroom you feel in some mysterious way that you are absorbing the wisdom contained in all the books through your skin, without even opening them.”
― Mark Twain

“Libraries were full of ideas—perhaps the most dangerous and powerful of all weapons.”
― Sarah J. Maas, Throne of Glass

“A good library will never be too neat, or too dusty, because somebody will always be in it, taking books off the shelves and staying up late reading them.”
― Lemony Snicket, Horseradish: Bitter Truths You Can't Avoid

“Whatever the cost of our libraries, the price is cheap compared to that of an ignorant nation.”
― Walter Cronkite

“People can lose their lives in libraries. They ought to be warned.”
― Saul Bellow

“[D]on't ever apologise to an author for buying something in paperback, or taking it out from a library (that's what they're there for. Use your library). Don't apologise to this author for buying books second hand, or getting them from bookcrossing or borrowing a friend's copy. What's important to me is that people read the books and enjoy them, and that, at some point in there, the book was bought by someone. And that people who like things, tell other people. The most important thing is that people read...”
― Neil Gaiman

“A library is a place where you can lose your innocence without losing your virginity.”
― Germaine Greer

“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.”
― Ray Bradbury

“Ben wished the world was organized by the Dewey decimal system. That way you'd be able to find whatever you were looking for.”
― Brian Selznick, Wonderstruck

“She sounds like someone who spends a lot of time in libraries, which are the best sorts of people.”
― Catherynne M. Valente, The Girl Who Circumnavigated Fairyland in a Ship of Her Own Making

“A library is a good place to go when you feel unhappy, for there, in a book, you may find encouragement and comfort. A library is a good place to go when you feel bewildered or undecided, for there, in a book, you may have your question answered. Books are good company, in sad times and happy times, for books are people - people who have managed to stay alive by hiding between the covers of a book."

[Letters of Note; Troy (MI, USA) Public Library, 1971]”
― E.B. White

“Don't join the book burners. Don't think you're going to conceal faults by concealing evidence that they ever existed. Don't be afraid to go in your library and read every book...”
― Dwight D. Eisenhower

“The three rules of the Librarians of Time and Space are: 1) Silence; 2) Books must be returned no later than the last date shown; and 3) Do not interfere with the nature of causality.”
― Terry Pratchett, Guards! Guards!

“In principle and reality, libraries are life-enhancing palaces of wonder.”
― Gail Honeyman, Eleanor Oliphant Is Completely Fine

“Rule number one: Don't fuck with librarians.”
― Neil Gaiman

“An original idea. That can't be too hard. The library must be full of them.”
― Stephen Fry

“The classroom was a jail of other people’s interests. The library was open, unending, free.”
― Ta-Nehisi Coates

“Walking the stacks in a library, dragging your fingers across the spines -- it's hard not to feel the presence of sleeping spirits.”
― Robin Sloan, Mr. Penumbra's 24-Hour Bookstore

“I like libraries. It makes me feel comfortable and secure to have walls of words, beautiful and wise, all around me. I always feel better when I can see that there is something to hold back the shadows.”
― Roger Zelazny, Nine Princes in Amber

“Books permit us to voyage through time, to tap the wisdom of our ancestors. The library connects us with the insight and knowledge, painfully extracted from Nature, of the greatest minds that ever were, with the best teachers, drawn from the entire planet and from all our history, to instruct us without tiring, and to inspire us to make our own contribution to the collective knowledge of the human species. 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.”
― Carl Sagan, Cosmos

“When I got [my] library card, that was when my life began.”
― Rita Mae Brown

“Libraries are our friends.”
― Neil Gaiman

“Without libraries what have we? We have no past and no future.”
― Ray Bradbury

“What a school thinks about its library is a measure of what it feels about education.”
― Harold Howe

“Librarians are the coolest people out there doing the hardest job out there on the frontlines. And every time I get to encounter or work with librarians, I'm always impressed by their sheer awesomeness.”
― Neil Gaiman

“Don't mark up the Library's copy, you fool! Librarians are Unprankable. They'll track you down! They have skills!”
― Charles Ogden

“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.

[Response to questionnaire in Saturday Review, October 29 1960]”
― John F. Kennedy

“Libraries really are wonderful. They're better than bookshops, even. I mean bookshops make a profit on selling you books, but libraries just sit there lending you books quietly out of the goodness of their hearts.”
― Jo Walton, Among Others

“If your library is not "unsafe," it probably isn't doing its job.”
― John Berry

“Libraries raised me.”
― Ray Bradbury