#Libraries Quotes

“Consider what you have in the smallest well-chosen library-a company of the wisest and wittiest men which can be plucked out of all civilized countries in a thousand years. The men themselves were then hidden and inaccessible. They were solitary, impatient of interruption, and fenced by etiquette. But now they are immortal, and the thought they did not reveal, even to their bosom friends, is here written out in transparent words of light to us, who are strangers of another age.”

“But there is no end to the praise of books, to the value of the library. Who shall estimate their influence on our population where all the millions read and write ? It is the joy of nations that man can communicate all his thoughts, discoveries and virtues to records that may last for centuries.”

“Nothing makes a man more reverent than a library.”

“Second hand books are wild books, homeless books; they have come together in vast flocks of variegated feather, and have a charm which the domesticated volumes of the library lack.”

“I ransack public libraries & find them full of sunk treasure.”

“Lock up your libraries if you like; but there is no gate, no lock, no bolt that you can set upon the freedom of my mind.”

“Shut not your doors to me proud libraries.”

“I have often thought that nothing would do more extensive good at small expense than the establishment of a small circulating library in every county, to consist of a few well-chosen books, to be lent to the people of the country under regulations as would secure their safe return in due time.”

“In a library we are surrounded by many hundreds of dear friends, but they are imprisoned by an enchanter in these paper and leathern boxes.”

“You should love literature. You should live in the library. Forget about films.”

“You must write every single day of your life... 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... may you be in love every day for the next 20,000 days. And out of that love, remake a world.”

“When rivers flooded, when fire fell from the sky, what a fine place the library was, the many rooms, the books. With luck, no one found you. How could they!--when you were off to Tanganyika in '98, Cairo in 1812, Florence in 1492!?”

“[His] library was a fine dark place bricked with books, so anything could happen there and always did. All you had to do was pull a book from the shelf and open it and suddenly the darkness was not so dark anymore.”

“I'm spending more time at this library in four days than I did at the Eureka College Library in four years.”

“Without the library, you have no civilization.”

“I discovered me in the library. I went to find me in the library.”

“I spent three days a week for 10 years educating myself in the public library, and it's better than college.”

“Meek young men grow up in libraries.”

“Libraries are absolutely at the center of my life. Since I couldn't afford to go to college, I attended the library three or four days a week from the age of eighteen on, and graduated from the library when I was twenty-eight.”

“But we do need a breather. We do need knowledge. And perhaps in a thousand years we might pick smaller cliffs to jump off. The books are to remind us what asses and fools we are. They’re Caesar’s praetorian guard, whispering as the parade roars down the avenue, ‘Remember, Caesar, thou art mortal.’ Most of us can’t rush around, talk to everyone, know all the cities of the world, we haven’t time, money or that many friends. The things you’re looking for, Montag, are in the world, but the only way the average chap will ever see ninety-nine per cent of them is in a book.”

“A library is all the university you will ever need.”

“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 spent three days a week for 10 years educating myself in the public library, and it's better than college. People should educate themselves - you can get a complete education for no money. At the end of 10 years, I had read every book in the library and I'd written a thousand stories.”

“... bums on the outside, libraries inside.”

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

“No use going to class unless you go to the library.”

“There's no use going to school unless your final destination is the library.”

“The doors of this Library are open now and are all welcome. The judgment of history is left to you, the people. I have no fears of that, for we have done our best. And so I say, come and learn from it.”

“But with the library, it's like catnip, I suppose: you begin to run in circles because there's so much to look at and read.”

“I am a librarian. I discovered me in the library. I went to find me in the library. Before I fell in love with libraries, I was just a six-year-old boy. The library fueled all of my curiosities, from dinosaurs to ancient Egypt. When I graduated from high school in 1938, I began going to the library three nights a week. I did this every week for almost ten years and finally, in 1947, around the time I got married, I figured I was done. So I graduated from the library when I was twenty-seven. I discovered that the library is the real school.”

“Libraries raised me.”

“Libraries are the center of our lives. There's no use going to a university if you don't live at the library.”

“Reading is at the center of our lives. The library is our brain. Without the library, you have no civilization.”

“You've got to love libraries. You've got to love books. You've got to love poetry. You've got to love everything about literature. Then, you can pick the one thing you love most and write about it.”

“A public library is the most enduring of memorials, the trustiest monument for the preservation of an event or a name or an affection; for it, and it only, is respected by wars and revolutions, and survives them.”

“You must live feverishly in a library. Colleges are not going to do any good unless you are raised and live in a library everyday of your life.”

“The library is the biggest cracker box factory in the world. The more you eat, the more you want.”

“I couldn't go to college, so I went to the library three days a week for 10 years.”

“When I graduated from high school I couldn't go to college, so I went to the library 3 days a week for 10 years.”

“I believe in libraries because most students don't have any money.”

“You take the books, you lie there in the pools of light and you drink life. That is how intensely I have loved libraries.”

“I never went to college, so I went to the library.”

“Libraries are places that house our dreams, our fantasies, our thirst for adventure.”

“I always knew from that moment, from the time I found myself at home in that little segregated library in the South, all the way up until I walked up the steps of the New York City library, I always felt, in any town, if I can get to a library, I'll be okay. It really helped me as a child, and that never left me. So I have a special place for every library, in my heart of hearts.”

“My encouragement to you is to go tomorrow to the library.”

“Every library should try to be complete on something, if it were only the history of pinheads.”

“The best candy shop a child can be left alone in, is the library”

“Information helps you to see that you're not alone. That there's somebody in Mississippi and somebody in Tokyo who all have wept, who've all longed and lost, who've all been happy. So the library helps you to see, not only that you are not alone, but that you're not really any different from everyone else.”

“I always felt, if I can get to a library, I'll be OK.”

“Libraries should be open to all - except the censor.”