Marguerite Yourcenar Quotes

Libraries are the torch of the world, illuminating the path when it feels too dark to see. We mustn't allow that torch to be extinguished.

Libraries are a hallmark of a civilized culture, and librarians represent that culture to all facets of society.

If you do not value libraries then you do not value information or culture or wisdom. You are silencing the voices of the past and you are damaging the future.

A library implies an act of faith.

Libraries are not made, they grow.

Libraries are public treasuries. They're ways in which well-meaning societies leave the wealth of the past arranged A to Z so that anyone walking past can find it.

What is more important in a library than anything else - than everything else - is the fact that it exists.

Libraries are the vessels in which the seed corn for the future is stored.

Libraries are the pride of the city.

Public libraries have been a mainstay of my life. They represent an individual's right to acquire knowledge; they are the sinews that bind civilized societies the world over. Without libraries, I would be a pauper, intellectually and spiritually.

The richest person in the world - in fact. All the riches in the world - couldn't provide you with anything like the endless, incredible loot available at your local library. You can measure the awareness, the breadth and the wisdom of a civilization, a nation, a people by the priority given to preserving these repositories of all that we are, all that we were, or will be.

Our concern for the future can be tested by how well we support our libraries.

Libraries hold the wisdom of the world and the stories of the ages - available to everyone, free of charge!

One of the first things my father taught me was that the library was made for and available to me. It's a place where you not only learn from books but you learn responsibility - how to borrow, take care of, and give back.

A picture's worth a thousand words? A library card's worth millions.

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.

One of the most subversive institutions in the United States is the public library.

Libraries really are the gates to the future.

Librarians are not just gatekeepers to knowledge, they are what the American Indians used to call their special sages who preserved the oral legends of a tribe: dream keepers.

I have an unshaken conviction that democracy can never be undermined if we maintain our library resources and a national intelligence capable of utilizing them.

The love of libraries, like most loves, must be learned.

A library implies an act of faith which generations, still in darkness hid, sign in their night in witness of the dawn.

The library should be a commonplace to every one. To use it should be as natural when one needs news or knowledge, fiction or fact, as it is to use the trolley when one needs transportation.

Throughout my formal education I spent many, many hours in public and school libraries. Libraries became courts of last resort, as it were. The current definitive answer to almost any question can be found within the four walls of most libraries.

If you cut funding to libraries, you cut the lifeblood of our communities.