Librarian Quotes

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

  Janis Ian

  Library, Culture, Hallmark

  16 Copy quote

• Librarians consider free access to information the foundation of democracy.

  Marilyn Johnson

  Democracy, Foundation, Information

  Marilyn Johnson (2010). “This Book Is Overdue!: How Librarians and Cybrarians Can Save Us All”, p.12, Harper Collins

  7 Copy quote

  Show source

• [Librarians] are subversive. You think they're just sitting there at the desk, all quiet and everything. They're like plotting the revolution, man. I wouldn't mess with them.

  Michael Moore

  Men, Thinking, Sitting

  15 Copy quote

• Librarians are the coolest people out there doing the hardest job out there on the frontlines. And every time I get to encounter or work with librarians, I'm always impressed by their sheer awesomeness.

  Neil Gaiman

  Jobs, Hardest Job, People

  11 Copy quote

• Google can bring you back 100,000 answers. A librarian can bring you back the right one.

  Neil Gaiman

  Book, Reading, Thought Provoking

  67 Copy quote

• Librarians have always been among the most thoughtful and helpful people. They are teachers without a classroom.

  Willard Scott

  Teacher, Book, Reading

  48 Copy quote

• The librarian isn't a clerk who happens to work in a library. A librarian is a data hound, a guide, a sherpa and a teacher. The librarian is the interface between reams of data and the untrained but motivated user.

  Seth Godin

  Teacher, Data, Clerks

  11 Copy quote

• I see libraries and librarians as frontline soldiers in the war against illiteracy and the lack of imagination.

  Neil Gaiman

  War, Imagination, Soldier

  7 Copy quote

• Librarians are tour-guides for all of knowledge.

  Patrick Ness

  Book, Reading, Thought Provoking

  53 Copy quote

• Without libraries what have we? We have no past and no future.

  Ray Bradbury

  Book, Reading, Past

  Speech by Minister Pallo Jordan on launch of the South African Library Week at the Bessie Head Public Library, Msunduzi Minicipality, Pietermaritzburg, www.dac.gov.za. March 14, 2009.

  27 Copy quote

  Show source

• The librarian of today, and it will be true still more of the librarians of tomorrow, are not fiery dragons interposed between the people and the books. They are useful public servants, who manage libraries in the interest of the public . . . Many still think that a great reader, or a writer of books, will make an excellent librarian. This is pure fallacy.

  William Osler

  Book, Thinking, Dragons

  7 Copy quote

• Libraries are not made, they grow.

  Augustine Birrell

  History, Library, Made

  Augustine Birrell (1899). “Collected Essays”

  18 Copy quote

  Show source

• Libraries: Here is where people, one frequently finds, lower their voices, and raise their minds.

  Richard Armour

  Voice, People, Mind

  Richard Armour (1961). “A Safari Into Satire”

  18 Copy quote

  Show source
• 

  Books are the quietest and most constant of friends; they are the most accessible and wisest of counsellors, and the most patient of teachers.

  Charles William Eliot

  Friendship, Happiness, Teacher

  "The Durable Satisfactions of Life (The Happy Life)". Book by Charles William Eliot (p. 37), 1910.

  83 Copy quote

  Show source

• A library is the delivery room for the birth of ideas, a place where history comes to life.

  Norman Cousins

  Reading, Book, Ideas

  Norman Cousins (1967). “Present Tense; an American Editor's Odyssey”

  66 Copy quote

  Show source

• Books are the quietest and most constant of friends.

  Charles William Eliot

  Book, Reading, Library

  Charles William Eliot (1926). “Charles W. Eliot: the man and his beliefs”

  24 Copy quote

  Show source

• A library is a temple unabridged with priceless treasure. Librarians are the majesties who loan the jewels of measure. They welcome to the kingdom the young and old of reapers and reign among the riches as the wondrous fortune keepers.

  Pam Muñoz Ryan

  Book, Jewels, Library

  46 Copy quote

• 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.

  Laura Bush

  Education, Children, Book

  "The 21st Century Elementary Library Media Program". Book by Carl A. Harvey, p. 3, 2009.

  67 Copy quote

  Show source

• It's funny that we think of libraries as quiet demure places where we are shushed by dusty, bun-balancing, bespectacled women. The truth is libraries are raucous clubhouses for free speech, controversy and community. Librarians have stood up to the Patriot Act, sat down with noisy toddlers and reached out to illiterate adults. Libraries can never be shushed.

  Paula Poundstone

  Truth, Women, Book

  39 Copy quote

• Consider what you have in the smallest chosen library. A company of the wisest and wittiest men that could be picked out of all civil countries, in a thousand years, have set in best order the results of their learning and wisdom.

  Ralph Waldo Emerson

  Country, Book, Reading

  Ralph Waldo Emerson (2013). “Delphi Complete Works of Ralph Waldo Emerson (Illustrated)”, p.2472, Delphi Classics

  18 Copy quote

  Show source

• I am what libraries and librarians have made me, with little assistance from a professor of Greek and poets

  Heraclitus

  Education, Book, Reading

  10 Copy quote

• I am not a librarian of my own work. It's a good thing not to be too involved with what you have done.

  Mick Jagger

  Done, Good Things, Working It

  7 Copy quote

• In any library in the world, I am at home, unselfconscious, still and absorbed.

  Germaine Greer

  Home, Library, World

  Daddy,We Hardly Knew You (1989)

  8 Copy quote

  Show source

• Being a librarian certainly helped me with my writing because it made me even more of a reader, and I was always an enthusiastic reader. Writing and reading seem to me to be different aspects of a single imaginative act.

  Margaret Mahy

  Reading, Writing, Different

  8 Copy quote

• Wherever they burn books they will also, in the end, burn human beings.

  Heinrich Heine

  Reading, Book, Evil

  Almansor: A Tragedy l. 245 (1823)

  63 Copy quote

  Show source