Community Resources Quotes

As a community we have been living beyond our means…. We have been living at a rate which is simply not justified by the amounts of goods and services we are producing.

It was from my own early experience that I decided there was no use to which money could be applied so productive of good to girls and boys who have good within them and ability and ambition to develop it as the founding of a public library.

Our libraries are not cloisters for an elite. They are for the people, and if they are not used, the fault belongs to those who do not take advantage of their wealth.

Unless we work to strengthening the family, … all the rest : schools, and playgrounds, and public assistance, and private concern, will never be enough to cut completely the circle of despair and deprivation.

In my world there would be as many public libraries as there are Starbucks.

The legislatures will have better means of information. They can discover the danger at a distance; and possessing all the organs of civil power, and the confidence of the people, they can at once adopt a regular plan of opposition, in which they can combine all the resources of the community. They can readily communicate with each other in the different States, and unite their common forces for the protection of their common liberty.

We must not think of learning as only what happens in schools. It is an extended part of life. The most readily available resource for all of life is our public library system.

There is a lot of talent in our slums.

When I was growing up, we used to play basketball in a park that was never shoveled when it snowed. The basketball rims were never fixed. And we understood then that there was a relationship between public policy and our quality of life.

Accessible local libraries are vital to communities and to children.

Merely responding with a “relief check” to complicated social and personal problems … is not likely to provide a lasting solution. Such a check must be supplemented with … by positive services and solutions offering the total resources of the community to meet the total needs of family to help our less fortunate citizens help themselves.

Let's make sure that we have health care benefits that have been promised to our veterans delivered to them in the communities that they are living in.

Caring for our nation's veterans must be our top priority as we work to create a more efficient and effective healthcare system at the VA.

I have a passion for libraries. They are potentially real community centers.

But libraries are about freedom. Freedom to read, freedom of ideas, freedom of communication. They are about education (which is not a process that finishes the day we leave school or university), about entertainment, about making safe spaces, and about access to information.

You go to your public library, or you call your fire department or police department, what do you think you are calling? These are socialist institutions.

What I think people should realize is that programs like Social Security, programs like Medicare, programs like the Veterans Administration, programs like your local park and your local library - those are, if you like, socialist programs; they're run by [and] for the public, not to make money. I think in many ways we should expand that concept so that the American people can enjoy the same benefits that people all over the world are currently enjoying.

That public parks should exist at all was a radical idea.

Where I grew up, the basketball courts were rarely used.

I had a mother who walked to the library with me, and you can't walk to a lot of libraries in San Antonio because - guess what? - there are no sidewalks, except in the neighborhoods. And they're across big boulevards, and it's so hot, you can't even walk to the corner. So things like that affect how children can get to libraries. So there are a lot of things involved.

We will not solve the addiction problem in America if we don't address social connection.

I've been working to make sure that we've got adequate transportation. I've been working to make sure that we can afford energy within our villages and in our communities.

There are many communities in the United States where the average family income is pitifully low. It is in those communities that we find the poorest educational facilities and the worst conditions of health. Why? It is not because they are satisfied to live as they do. It is because those communities have the lowest per capital wealth and income; therefore the lowest ability to pay taxes; and therefore inadequate functioning of local government.

Shout for libraries. Shout for the young readers who use them.

I think New York is a really wonderful place to raise a child. There's so much available, and so much diversity and culture, lots of things to see and do. My whole family is here.