I have offered several posts of quotations about reading and writing in this space, but it has been a long time since I posted quotations about libraries. So here are some I haven’t used before. Enjoy.

The purposes of libraries

Libraries store 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. –– producer and writer Sidney Sheldon

Perhaps no place in any community is so totally democratic as the town library. The only entrance requirement is interest. – former First Lady Lady Bird Johnson

Libraries keep the records on behalf of all humanity, the unique and the absurd, the wise and the fragments of stupidity. – educator Vartan Gregorian

The only thing that you absolutely have to know, is the location of the library. – scientist Albert Einstein

No university in the world has ever risen to greatness without a correspondingly great library… When this is no longer true, then will our civilization have come to an end. – librarian Lawrence Clark Powell

We’re competing with everything: the beach, the mall, bookstores. Libraries are in a transition right now, caught between two forces, the old ways and technology. Libraries are under a lot of pressure to provide both. – actor John Callahan

I’ve got a vendetta to destroy the Net, to make everyone go to the library. I love the organic thing of pen and paper, ink on canvas. I love going down to the library, the feel and smell of books. – actor Joseph Fiennes

No matter where you are or who you are, the e-library card and novel would allow access to catalogs, digitized collections of photographs, images, maps, manuscripts, encyclopedias, journals and other proprietary databases licensed on a statewide basis for free. — educator Richard Mills

Libraries and contemporary issues

A truly great library contains something in it to offend everyone. – librarian Jo Godwin

It’s everywhere. Guns and violence are in every nook and cranny of America. Many children can get a gun quicker than they can get a book out of the library. That puts us all at risk. – children’s rights advocate Marian Wright Edelman

According to these breathless reports and baseless hysteria, some have convinced the American Library Association that under the bipartisan Patriot Act, the FBI is not fighting terrorism. Instead agents are checking how far you have gotten on the latest Tom Clancy novel. – former Attorney General John Ashcroft

With a library you are free, not confined by temporary political climates. It is the most democratic of institutions because no one––but no one at all­­––can tell you what to read and when and how. – novelist Doris Lessing

Libraries and information seeking

In the nonstop tsunami of global information, librarians provide us with floaties and teach us to swim. –– NPR correspondent Linton Weeks

When the going gets tough, the tough get a librarian. – novelist Joan Bauer

Unlike with the majority of library books, when you enter a term into a search engine there is no guarantee that what you will find is authoritative, accurate or even vaguely true. – critic Howard Rheingold

Google can bring you back 100,000 answers. A librarian can bring you back the right one. –– author Neil Gaiman

My alma mater was books, a good library. I could spend the rest of my life reading, just satisfying my curiosity. – civil rights advocate Malcolm X

Basically I was a rebel growing up. I got kicked out of six schools. But I don’t think that it makes you less of an intellect. You know, if you ever crave knowledge, there’s always a library. – actress Michelle Rodriguez

A public library does not acquire Internet terminals in order to create a public forum for Web publishers to express themselves, any more than it collects books in order to provide a public forum for the authors of books to speak. – former Chief Justice William Rehnquist

Doing research on the Web is like using a library assembled piecemeal by pack rats and vandalized nightly. – film critic Roger Ebert

Library funding

What a school thinks about its library is a measure of what it feels about education. – educator Harold Howe

When I read about the way in which library funds are being cut and cut, I can only think that American society has found one more way to destroy itself. – polymath Isaac Asimov

Cutting libraries during a recession is like cutting hospitals during a plague. – library assistant Eleanor Crumblehulme

Library humor

I had plenty of pimples as a kid. One day I fell asleep in the library. When I woke up, a blind man was reading my face. – comedian Rodney Dangerfield

If truth is beauty, now come no one has their hair done in a library? – comedian Lily Tomlin

New York’s such a wonderful city. Although I was at the library today. The guys are very rude. I said, “I’d like a card.” He says, “You have to prove you’re a citizen of New York.” So I stabbed him. – comedian Emo Philips

I must say I find television very educational. The minute somebody turns it on, I go to the library and read a good book. – comedian Groucho Marx

Being a writer in a library is rather like being a eunuch in a harem. – novelist John Braine

Having fun isn’t hard when you’ve got a library card. – children’s author Marc Brown

Related posts:

25 quotations on libraries and reading
What they say about the library: provocative quotations