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Libraries
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~Libraries are not made;
they grow.
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-Augustine Birrell
Obiter Dicta, 2nd Series, 1884-1887
"Book-buying"
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I have always imagined that Paradise will be
a kind of library.
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-Jorge Luis Borges
El Hacedor / The Dreamtigers,
1960
"Poema de los Dones"
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Now let us go into my Library, it is not
furnish'd with very many Books, but those I have, are very good ones.
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-Eusebeus
Colloquia, 1519
"The Religious Treat" (aka The Godly Feast)
N. Bailey, trans., 1725
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Read the Bible. It teaches you how to act.
Read the hymn book. It contains the finest poetry ever written. Read the
almanac. It shows you how to figure out what the weather will be. There
isn't another book that is necessary for anyone to read, and therefore I
am opposed to all libraries.
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-Hal Kimberly
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*If there were no books,
no written records, think how prodigious a time twenty-three centuries would
be. With four generations per century, twenty-three centuries occupies
almost a hundred generations of human beings. If information could be passed
on merely by word of mouth, how little we should know of our past, how slow
would be our progress! Everything would depend on what ancient findings we
had accidentally been told about , and how accurate the account was. Past
information might be revered, but in successive retellings it would become
progressively more muddled and eventually lost. Books permit us to voyage
through time, to tap the wisdom of our ancestors. The library connects us
with the insights and knowledge, painfully extracted form Nature, of the
greatest minds that ever were, with the best teachers, drawn from the entire
planet and from all of our history, to instruct us without tiring, and to
inspire us to make our own contribution to the collective knowledge of the
human species. Public libraries depend on voluntary contributions. I
think the health of our civilization, the depth of our awareness about
the underpinnings of our culture and our concern for the future can all be
tested by how well we support our libraries.
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-Carl Sagan
Cosmos, 1980
Chapter XI, "The Persistence of Memory"
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Lock up your libraries if you like, but there
is no gate, no lock, no bolt, that you can set upon the freedom of my mind.
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-Virginia Woolfe
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