You’ll find below a selection of quotes devoted to places and people deserving the most attention: libraries and librarians.
Libraries are essential in a process of giving citizens access to knowledge. In digital times they are needed more than ever before.
Get your library card, and you’ll be able to borrow a print or electronic book, use free internet, or attend a course that will improve your digital skills.
Most importantly, however, libraries are the places where you can expect smart and clear answers to even the most difficult questions.
Neil Gaiman perfectly describes what’s happening in digital times: “Google can bring you back 100,000 answers, a librarian can bring you back the right one.”
In times of the internet, everyone can visit a library without leaving home. It’s just a matter of opening a library website, and you can not only borrow an ebook but also ask the librarian an online question.
Where are you heading with your life? Each direction is good if there is a library along the way.
Please share the library quotes that are still missing. We’d be more than happy to add them. You can use the comments section below, or reach us on social media. Thanks!
50 best quotes about libraries and librarians
1
When in doubt go to the library.
– J.K. Rowling
2
Bad libraries build collections, good libraries build services, great libraries build communities.
– R. David Lankes
3
An original idea. That can’t be too hard. The library must be full of them.
– Stephen Fry
This vintage-style artwork is available on Zazzle on several products, including apparel, personal accessories, and wall decor.
4
To build up a library is to create a life. It’s never just a random collection of books.
– Carlos María Domínguez
5
When I got my library card, that’s when my life began.
– Rita Mae Brown
6
Without libraries what have we? We have no past and no future.
– Ray Bradbury
7
The only thing that you absolutely have to know, is the location of the library.
– Albert Einstein
Adorably illustrated by Simini Blocker, the quote by Albert Einstein would make a great welcome poster in every library!
8
Libraries will get you through times of no money better than money will get you through times of no libraries.
– Anne Herbert
9
The truth is libraries are raucous clubhouses for free speech, controversy and community.
– Paula Poundstone
10
When you absolutely positively have to know, ask a librarian.
– American Library Association
11
The most important asset of any library goes home at night – the library staff.
– Timothy Healy
12
In the nonstop tsunami of global information, librarians provide us with floaties and teach us to swim.
– Linton Weeks
13
I ransack public libraries, and find them full of sunk treasure.
– Virginia Woolf
Virginia Woolf’s famous quote about libraries is a part of our “Vintage Library Quotes” series. Available on Zazzle on over 50 items.
14
People can lose their lives in libraries. They ought to be warned.
– Saul Bellow
15
The library card is a passport to wonders and miracles, glimpses into other lives, religions, experiences, the hopes and dreams and strivings of ALL human beings, and it is this passport that opens our eyes and hearts to the world beyond our front doors, that is one of our best hopes against tyranny, xenophobia, hopelessness, despair, anarchy, and ignorance.
– Libba Bray
16
I have found the most valuable thing in my wallet is my library card.
– Laura Bush
17
I’m really a library man, or second-hand book man.
– John le Carre
18
Libraries were full of ideas – perhaps the most dangerous and powerful of all weapons.
– Sarah J. Maas
A quote by the NYT bestselling author Sarah J. Maas is available on almost 50 items, including home decor, stationery, cases and skins for phones and tablets, or clothes.
19
A library is the delivery room for the birth of ideas, a place where history comes to life.
– Norman Cousins
20
Libraries store the energy that fuels the imagination. They open up windows to the world and inspire us to explore and achieve, and contribute to improving our quality of life.
– Sidney Sheldon
21
If I was a book, I would like to be a library book, so I would be taken home by all different sorts of kids.
– Cornelia Funke
22
Libraries always remind me that there are good things in this world.
– Lauren Ward
This wonderful quote comes from Lauren Ward and is visualized beautifully by herself.
23
Cutting libraries during a recession is like cutting hospitals during a plague.
– Eleanor Crumblehulme
24
If you want to get laid, go to college. If you want an education, go to the library.
– Frank Zappa
25
There is no problem that a library card can’t solve.
– Eleanor Brown
The quote by Eleanor Brown is available on Redbubble on almost 80 items, including transparent sticker in three sizes.
26
Shout for libraries. Shout for the young readers who use them.
– Patrick Ness
27
Librarians are almost always very helpful and often almost absurdly knowledgeable. Their skills are probably very underestimated and largely underemployed.
– Charles Medawar
28
If truth is beauty, how come no one has their hair done in the library?
– Lily Tomlin
29
With a library you are free, not confined by temporary political climates. It is the most democratic of institutions because no one – but no one at all – can tell you what to read and when and how.
– Doris Lessing
30
A truly great library contains something in it to offend everyone.
– Jo Godwin
Good folks from Bookish Birds offer this bold quote from Jo Godwin placed on a page from a dictionary that was destined for the trash bin. A perfect gift for a library lover in your life!
31
A library book, I imagine, is a happy book.
– Cornelia Funke
32
Libraries raised me.
– Ray Bradbury
33
Everything you need for better future and success has already been written. And guess what? All you have to do is go to the library.
– Henri Frederic Amiel
34
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
35
Librarians are tour-guides for all of knowledge.
– Patrick Ness
Here is another visualization from our vintage-style quote series inspired by classic book covers. On Zazzle, you will have to place the artwork on dozens of merch products. What’s more, you will have a chance to customize it!
36
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
37
A good library will never be too neat, or too dusty, because somebody will always be in it, taking books off the shelves and staying up late reading them.
– Lemony Snicket
38
Google can bring you back 100,000 answers, a librarian can bring you back the right one.
– Neil Gaiman
39
You want weapons? We’re in a library. Books are the best weapon in the world. This room’s the greatest arsenal we could have. Arm yourself!
– Russell T. Davies (Doctor Who)
From Aenaon Art Work comes a typographic poster with a famous quote from Doctor Who TV series: season 2, episode 2 – “Tooth and Claw”.
40
A great library is one nobody notices because it is always there, and always has what people need.
– Vicki Myron
41
Being a writer in a library is rather like being a eunuch in a harem.
– John Braine
42
Bookshops and libraries are a backstage of success.
– Piotr Kowalczyk
From a large collection of book quotes by Piotr Kowalczyk, we’ve picked up the one that describes what leads to success in life. Available on almost 80 products on Redbubble, including wall art, t-shirts, and mugs.
43
Perhaps no place in any community is so totally democratic as the town library. The only entrance requirement is interest.
– Lady Bird Johnson
44
Librarians have always been among the most thoughtful and helpful people. They are teachers without a classroom.
– Willard Scott
45
My two favorite things in life are libraries and bicycles. They both move people forward without wasting anything.
– Peter Golkin
46
A library is a place where you can lose your innocence without losing your virginity.
– Germaine Greer
47
Libraries are reservoirs of strength, grace and wit, reminders of order, calm and continuity, lakes of mental energy, neither warm nor cold, light nor dark… In any library in the world, I am at home, unselfconscious, still and absorbed.
– Germaine Greer
48
Nothing is pleasanter than exploring a library.
– Walter Savage Landor
Check out the entire library quote series on Society6.
48
Libraries are our friends.
– Neil Gaiman
50
Having fun isn’t hard when you’ve got a library card.
– Marc Brown
The popular library quote by Marc Brown is visualized to resemble classic book cover design. Available as art print in five sizes to fit any wall space.
51
Librarians are the secret masters of the world. They control information. Don’t ever piss one off.
– Spider Robinson
52
A library is not a luxury but one of the necessities of life.
– Henry Ward Beecher
Another great library poster from Bookish Birds, with the hand-lettered quote by Henry Ward Beecher.
53
What a school thinks about its library is a measure of what it feels about education.
– Harold Howe
54
A library is a place where you learn what teachers were afraid to teach you.
– Alan M. Dershowitz
55
Rule number one: Don’t f**k with librarians.
– Neil Gaiman
Neil Gaiman’s bold statement was cleverly modified to be used, well, in libraries:-)
56
A university is just a group of buildings gathered around a library.
– Shelby Foote
57
When the going gets tough, the tough get a librarian.
– Joan Bauer
58
Librarian is a service occupation. Gas station attendant of the mind.
– Richard Powers
59
The love of libraries, like most loves, must be learned.
– Alberto Manguel
60
What is more important in a library than anything else – than everything else – is the fact that it exists.
– Archibald MacLeish
61
Libraries are the future of reading.
– Courtney Milan
62
When I read about the way in which library funds are being cut and cut, I can only think that American society has found one more way to destroy itself.
– Isaac Asimov
63
We may sit in our library and yet be in all quarters of the earth.
– John Lubbock
The quote is available on posters, in sizes between 4 × 4 and 40 × 40 inches. You can also get it as an instant download. Plus, there is a way to transfer the design to dozens of other products.
Bonus
Go to the library even when not in doubt.
If you believe Jane Rowling’s “when in doubt, go to the library” is not quite right. This cozy hand-lettered design says: “Go to the library, even when not in doubt.” Available on dozens of products including posters.
Keep exploring. Here are other lists and tips for library lovers:
- Just like a year ago, we are presenting the list of ebooks that were most downloaded from Project Gutenberg in […]
- These library-themed gifts are extremely easy to personalize. All you have to do is add your own text!
- In this updated overview, you’ll see gorgeous iPhone covers that will remind you of the joy of reading books anywhere, […]
- Explore some of the best home decor items for book lovers that are handmade from metal: steel, brass, copper, bolts, […]
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