library

A library is chamber of treasures.

Over a hundred German scientists arrived here [Huntsville] at eleven o__lock on an April morning and by nightfall more than sixty had applied for cards at the free library.

The world of books is the only paradise there is.

To read is to renew thy mind.

If you wish to renew your mind, read.

You can only learn to read by reading.

Open the book and read it to renew your mind.

Libraries allow children to ask questions about the world and find the answers. And the wonderful thing is that once a child learns to use a library, the doors to learning are always open.

When you are growing up there are two institutional places that affect you most powerfully: the church, which belongs to God, and the public library, which belongs to you. The public library is a great equaliser.

I received the fundamentals of my education in school, but that was not enough. My real education, the superstructure, the details, the true architecture, I got out of the public library. For an impoverished child whose family could not afford to buy books, the library was the open door to wonder and achievement, and I can never be sufficiently grateful that I had the wit to charge through that door and make the most of it. Now, when I read constantly about the way in which library funds are being cut and cut, I can only think that the door is closing and that American society has found one more way to destroy itself.

What a school thinks about its library is a measure of what it feels about education.

Information is nutrition, knowledge is nutrition, art is nutrition and they set us free. Internet is a great library, great library is a freedom within wisdom in this digital age

If I had lost everything and was out on the streets with no money I would go sit in the library and read and meditate for weeks at a time.

I've never thought much of strictly organised and methodical study. You can't arrange a library in alphabetical order until you've collected one.

As humans, we have invented lots of useful kinds of lie. As well as lies-to-children ('as much as they can understand') there are lies-to-bosses ('as much as they need to know') lies-to-patients ('they won't worry about what they don't know') and, for all sorts of reasons, lies-to-ourselves. Lies-to-children is simply a prevalent and necessary kind of lie. Universities are very familiar with bright, qualified school-leavers who arrive and then go into shock on finding that biology or physics isn't quite what they've been taught so far. 'Yes, but you needed to understand that,' they are told, 'so that now we can tell you why it isn't exactly true.' Discworld teachers know this, and use it to demonstrate why universities are truly storehouses of knowledge: students arrive from school confident that they know very nearly everything, and they leave years later certain that they know practically nothing. Where did the knowledge go in the meantime? Into the university, of course, where it is carefully dried and stored.

You are more likely to find three TVs inside a randomly selected house than you are to find a single book that is or was not read to pass an exam, to please God, or to be a better cook.

The only way to educate oneself is by making books a life companion.

Choose a leader who will invest in building bridges, not walls. Books, not weapons. Morality, not corruption. Intellectualism and wisdom, not ignorance.