#library

If you cannot read all your books, at any rate handle, or as it were, fondle them – peer into them, let them fall open where they will, read from the first sentence that arrests the eye, set them back on the shelves with your own hands, arrange them on your own plan so that if you do not know what is in them, you at least know where they are. Let them be your friends; let them at any rate be your acquaintances. If they cannot enter the circle of your life, do not deny them at least a nod of recognition. ↗

— Winston Churchill

#churchill #friend #library #life #read

A little library, growing larger every year, is an honourable part of a man's history. It is a man's duty to have books. A library is not a luxury, but one of the necessaries of life. ↗

— Henry Ward Beecher

#library #life

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

#love

I grew up in a utopia, I did. California when I was a child was a child's paradise, I was healthy, well fed, well clothed, well housed. I went to school and there were libraries with all the world in them and after school I played in orange groves and in Little League and in the band and down at the beach and every day was an adventure. . . . I grew up in utopia. ↗

— Kim Stanley Robinson

#beach #california #groves #libraries #library

Books are only half our job ; the other half is human nature. ↗

— Mary Virginia Provines

#human-nature #job #librarians #library #people

All I wanted to do was go back inside to the library and read a book.I used to spend all my time reading books, or watching television. It was safe. Nobody ever was hurt or teased or looked stupid while reading books or watching television. ↗

— Kathryn Magendie

#library #reading #tv #television

...killing rats wasn’t in my job description. ↗

— Scott Douglas

#library #quiet-please #description

We'll always need printed books that don't mutate the way digital books do; we'll always need places to display books, auditoriums for book talks, circles for story time; we'll always need brick-and-mortar libraries. ↗

— Marilyn Johnson

#libraries #library #librarians

We don’t have to destroy the library of the past. We just need to give it a face-lift. ↗

— Scott Douglas

#library #library-books #quiet-please #librarians

I'm not comfortable being preachy, but more people need to start spending as much time in the library as they do on the basketball court. ↗

— Kareem Abdul-Jabbar

#basketball court #being #comfortable #court #i