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There is not such a cradle of democracy upon the earth as the Free Public Library, this republic of letters, where neither rank, office, nor wealth receives the slightest consideration. -- Andrew Carnegie
One of the reasons that I take such joy in being a trustee of the New York Public Library is the love of reading that I found as a child in the Saturday morning library events for preschoolers and first and second graders as I was growing up in Augusta, GA. -- Jessye Norman
My alma mater is the Chicago Public Library. -- David Mamet
My most prized possession was my library card from the Oakland Public Library. -- Bill Russell
I fell in love with books at the Elizabeth Public Library when I was four... -- Judy Blume
No place affords a more striking conviction of the vanity of human hopes than a public library. -- Samuel Johnson
All you need in life is truth and beauty and you can find both at the Public Library. -- Studs Terkel
First paycheck I get, I thought, I'm going to get myself a room near the downtown L.A. Public Library. -- Charles Bukowski
I always carry a pistol when I go [to the New York Public Library]. Never did trust those stone lions. -- Robert Bloch
Each time you admire the faÃ§ade of the New York Public Library, you are paying homage to Western civilization. -- Ibn Warraq
As a librarian for 18 years at the Merck branch of the Trenton Public Library, I was sorely tested by the slow-witted and obtuse among the citizenry -- Joyce Carol Oates
My alma mater is the Chicago Public Library. I got what little educational foundation I got in the third-floor reading room, under the tutelage of a Coca-Cola sign. -- David Mamet
If we can put a man on the moon and sequence the human genome, we should be able to devise something close to a universal digital public library. -- Peter Singer
Loaded with note cards for research papers that I was hopelessly behind on, I'd enter the Public Library only to end up wandering around lost, wasting the day. -- Stuart Dybek
I've seen the most remarkable thing. It's in the New York Public Library. They've got the original typescript of 'The Importance of Being Earnest' - all four acts of it. -- Peter Shaffer
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the theater should be free to the people just as the Public Library is free, just as the museum is free. ... I want the theater to be made accessible to the people. -- Eva Le Gallienne
For some 25 years, I worked as a librarian, first at the New York Public Library, then at Trenton State College in New Jersey. My life has always been with, around, and for books. -- Avi
I think the New York Public Library is so, so amazing. It's literally the coolest place - It's good shelter from the sun and it's the most beautiful building. It's really, really fun. -- Natalie Portman
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We take it into account from the very beginning and try to steer couples toward items that lend themselves to those circumstances. Sometimes we have to steer a little more forcefully - you can't fry French fries in the New York Public Library. -- David Castle
I spent a lot of time at the New York Public Library, the main branch. I was one of those people. If you ever spend a good amount of time there, you realize there are people who spend the entire day there. They're bookish homeless people. -- Lisa Yuskavage
In America there is a public library in every community. How many public libraries are there in Africa? Every day there are new books coming out and new ideas being discussed. But these new books and ideas don't reach Africa and we are being left behind. -- George Weah
I spent three days a week for 10 years educating myself in the public library, and it's better than college. People should educate themselves - you can get a complete education for no money. At the end of 10 years, I had read every book in the library and I'd written a thousand stories. -- Ray Bradbury
Children have to have access to books, and a lot of children can't go to a store and buy a book. We need not only our public libraries to be funded properly and staffed properly, but our school libraries. Many children can't get to a public library, and the only library they have is a school library. -- Katherine Paterson
While writing my memoir, 'When Skateboards Will Be Free,' I would sometimes have to pore over hours of microfilm at the New York Public Library in order to try to get one obscure detail right. For instance, was the Socialist Workers Party originally called the American Workers Party or the Workers Party of the United States? -- Said Sayrafiezadeh
I ransack public libraries, and find them full of sunk treasure. -- Virginia Woolf
The America I love still exists at the front desks of our public libraries. -- Kurt Vonnegut
If you file your waste-paper basket for fifty years, you have a public library. -- Tony Benn
For those without money, the road to the treasure house of the imagination begins at the public library. -- Pete Hamill
I spent three days a week for 10 years educating myself in the public library, and it's better than college. -- Ray Bradbury
The public library is more than a repository of books. It's a mysterious, wondrous place with the power to change lives. -- Elizabeth Taylor
Here was one place where I could find out who I was and what I was going to become. And that was the public library. -- Jerzy Kosinski
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. -- Keith Richards
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. -- Isaac Asimov
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. -- David McCullough
If this nation is to be wise as well as strong, if we are to achieve our destiny, then we need more new ideas for more wise men reading more good books in more public libraries. -- John F. Kennedy
A public library is the most enduring of memorials, the trustiest monument for the preservation of an event or a name or an affection; for it, and it only, is respected by wars and revolutions, and survives them. -- Mark Twain
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. -- James A. Michener
The reflections and histories of men and women throughout the world are contained in books.... America's greatness is not only recorded in books, but it is also dependent upon each and every citizen being able to utilize public libraries. -- Terence Cooke
So the America I loved still exists, if not in the White House or the Supreme Court or the Senate or the House of Representatives or the media. The America I love still exists at the front desks of our public libraries. -- Kurt Vonnegut
No place affords a more striking conviction of the vanity of human hopes than a public library; for who can see the wall crowded on every side by mighty volumes, the works of laborious meditations and accurate inquiry, now scarcely known but by the catalogue... -- Samuel Johnson
The public library system of the United States is worth preserving. -- Henry Rollins
Closing a public library is child abuse, really, because it hinders child development. -- Alan Bennett
But the best problem I ever found, I found in my local public library. -- Andrew Wiles
I am hard-pressed to find a successful writer who doesn't have a similar story to mine - transformation through the public library. -- Karin Slaughter
In my opinion, right up there with free public schools, our free public library system is what makes citizenship possible, even what makes America great. -- Karen DeCrow
I didn't belong to the sort of family where the children's classics were laid on. I went to the public library and read everything I could get my hands on. -- Pat Barker
The institution of a public library, containing books on education, would be well adapted for the information of teachers, many of whom are not able to purchase expensive publications on those subjects. -- Joseph Lancaster
As a child, recognizing my difference from other kids, I went to the local public library to try to better understand my reality. Back then, many library card catalogues didn't even list 'homosexuality' as a topic. -- James McGreevey
I had no books at home. I started to frequent a public library in Lisbon. It was there, with no help except curiosity and the will to learn, that my taste for reading developed and was refined. -- Jose Saramago
Not long before my mother died, I found a long-lost portrait of Jane Franklin's granddaughter, Jane Flagg, aged nine - oil on canvas - in the basement of a public library not a dozen miles from my mother's house. -- Jill Lepore
You used to have to own a radio tower or television tower or printing press. Now all you have to have is access to an Internet cafe or a public library, and you can put your thoughts out in public. -- Clay Shirky
I was the kind of reader in smudged pink harlequin glasses sitting on the cool, dusty floor of the Arrandale public library, standing at the edge of the playground, having broken a tooth in dodge ball, and lying under my covers with a flashlight. -- Amy Bloom
We didn't have a phone when I was a kid, and I was too shy to smash any public phones, and our town didn't have a pool hall either, so I had to hang out at the public library - and anyway, I told myself stories. -- John Thomas Sladek
My first encounter with James was when I was seventeen. My brother brought home from the public library a science fiction anthology, which included 'The Beast in the Jungle.' It swept me away. I had a strange, somewhat uncanny feeling that it was the story of my life. -- Cynthia Ozick
A family living at the poverty level is unlikely to be able to afford a computer at home. Even with a computer, access to the Internet is another significant expense. A child might borrow a book from a public library; but it is not possible to take a computer home. -- Margaret Geller
Where I grew up, we had the three TV networks, maybe two radio stations, no cable TV. We still had a long-distance party line in our neighborhood, so you could listen to all your neighbors' phone calls. We had a very small public library, and the nearest bookstore was an hour away. -- Marc Andreessen
From fifth grade on, I worked at our public library. The pay, a pittance, was almost superfluous. All through high school, I looked forward to summer as the time when I could work at the library four or five days a week. I was never a camp counselor, a lifeguard, a scooper of ice cream. -- Julia Glass
I loved doing problems in school. I'd take them home and make up new ones of my own. But the best problem I ever found, I found in my local public library. I was just browsing through the section of math books and I found this one book, which was all about one particular problem - Fermat's Last Theorem. -- Andrew Wiles
I was so inspired by Dr. King that in 1956, with some of my brothers and sisters and first cousins - I was only 16 years old - we went down to the public library trying to check out some books, and we were told by the librarian that the library was for whites only and not for colors. It was a public library. -- John Lewis
I am a public library -- Tony Benn
Freedom is a public library. -- Paula Fox
The public library is the great equaliser. -- Keith Richards
Don't forget to support your public library. -- Bob Dylan
The public library is where place and possibility meet. -- Stuart Dybek
The best place to find things: the public library. -- Edward Bernays
Yo Mama's like a library, open to the public. -- Oliver Oliver Reed
The public library is the most dangerous place in town -- John Ciardi
The public library is a center of public happiness first, of public education next. -- John Cotton Dana
One of the most subversive institutions in the United States is the public library.. -- bell hooks
Here is the treasure chest of the world - the public library, or a bookstore. -- Benjamin Carson
Why can't I just Google it like everything else?! I hate you public library system! -- Vera Brosgol
Dulcie always found a public library a little upsetting, for one saw so many odd people there... -- Barbara Pym
I want to know how the hell you managed to locate that hideout using the damn public library. -- Richard Castle
With a public library card in your hand, you have access to the Internet and a world of opportunities. -- Bill Gates
I do readings at the public library. I just did a benefit scene night for my old acting teacher. -- Mark Ruffalo
You wasted $150,000 on an education you could have got for a buck fifty in late charges at the public library. -- Ben Affleck
Books read in a public library never have the same flavour as books read in the attic or the kitchen. -- Alberto Manguel
A public library is the most democratic thing in the world. What can be found there has undone dictators and tyrants. -- Doris Lessing
[T]he public library is where those without money, power, access, university affiliation, or advanced degrees can get information for free.. -- Siva Vaidhyanathan
I attempted briefly to consecrate myself in the public library, believing every crack in my soul could be chinked with a book. -- Barbara Kingsolver
In fact, of course, there is no secret knowledge; no one knows anything that can't be found on a shelf in the public library. -- Daniel Quinn
Instead of going to Paris to attend lectures, go to the public library, and you won't come out for twenty years, if you really wish to learn. -- Leo Tolstoy
There were two free public libraries within walking distance of my home; I remember taking six books home from every visit, the limit set by the library. -- Martin Lewis Perl
On my first visit to the public library, I was like a kid at a candy store where all the candy was free. I gorged myself until my tummy ached. -- Craig Thompson
The door available to everyone that can lead to happiness & success is the modest door of the public library. I found it to be so in my own life and work. -- Herman Wouk
When we build a public library, we don't have to pay to get in, but when we build a stadium, we have to pay the owner every time we go to a game. -- Jesse Ventura
I was so naive about writing, I went to the public library and checked out the only volume they had on the topic - an academic treatise about publishing from the WWII era. -- Bruce Feiler

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