#libraries

Libraries are not facing crisis, they are in crisis. ↗

— Patrick Ness

#libraries #thoughtful #inspirational

The message is clear: libraries matter. Their solid presence at the heart of our towns sends the proud signal that everyone - whoever they are, whatever their educational background, whatever their age or their needs - is welcome. ↗

— Kate Mosse

#background #clear #educational #educational background #everyone

I don’t think people realise how vital libraries are or what a colossal danger it would be if we were to lose any more. Having had a truncated school life myself, all of my education from the age of 17 has been self-taught. I wouldn’t be the person I am today if it wasn’t for the opportunities the library gave me. ↗

— Alan Moore

#information #learning #libraries #save-libraries #self-taught

A library in the middle of a community is a cross between an emergency exit, a life raft and a festival. They are cathedrals of the mind; hospitals of the soul; theme parks of the imagination. ↗

— Caitlin Moran

#libraries #profound #imagination

This place is a mystery. A sanctuary. Every book, every volume you see, has a soul. The soul of the person who wrote it & the soul of those who read it & lived it & dreamed with it. Every time a book changes hands, every time someone runs his eyes down it's pages, it's spirit grows & strengthens. In this place, books no longer remembered by anyone, books that are lost in time, live forever, waiting for the day when they will reach a new reader's hands, a new spirit... ↗

— Carlos Ruiz Zafón

#libraries #reading #change

For him that stealeth, or borroweth and returneth not, this book from its owner, Let it change into a serpent in his hand and rend him. Let him be struck with palsy and all his members blasted. Let him languish in pain crying out for mercy, Let there be no surcease to his agony till he sink in dissolution. Let bookworms gnaw his entrails in token of the worm that dieth not. When at last he goeth to his final punishment, Let the flames of Hell consume him forever. [attributed to the Monastery of San Pedro in Barcelona, Spain] ↗

— Nicholas A. Basbanes

#curses #libraries #thieves #change

The only way to make a library safe is to lock people out of it. As long as they are allowed to read the books 'any old time they have a mind to,' libraries will remain the nurseries of heresy and independence of thought. They will, in fact, preserve that freedom which is a far more important part of our lives than any ideology or orthodoxy, the freedom that dissolves orthodoxies and inspires solutions to the ever-changing challenges of the future. I hope that your library and mine will continue in this way to be dangerous for many years to come. ↗

— Edmund S. Morgan

#freedom #ideas #libraries #thought #change

The way we've been neglecting to support our libraries throughout the country is a shame. ↗

— Matthew Lesko

#country #libraries #neglecting #our #shame

What is also strange to me is that public libraries have always been in the forefront of opposing censorship. ↗

— Matthew Lesko

#always #been #censorship #forefront #libraries

I've been talking about the centrality of libraries in our information society for a while now. ↗

— Matthew Lesko

#been #centrality #i #information #libraries