Share on Facebook Share on Twitter Comment on this quote Share via Email Print this Page [1-20] of 32 Library quotesLibrary QuotesLibrary Next 20 quotes Why is Intellectual Freedom Important? Intellectual freedom is the basis of our democratic system. We expect our people to be self-governors. But to do so responsibly, our citizenry must be well informed. Libraries provide the ideas and information, in a variety of formats, to allow people to inform themselves.~ American Library Association We believe that free communication is essential to the preservation of a free society and a creative culture.~ American Library Association Intellectual freedom is the right of every individual to both seek and receive information from all points of view without restriction. It provides for free access of all expressions of ideas through which any and all sides of a question, cause or movement may be explored.~ American Library Association We trust Americans to recognize propaganda and misinformation, and to make their own decisions about what they read and believe.~ American Library Association The freedom to read is essential to our democracy. It is continuously under attack… These actions apparently arise from a view that our national tradition of free expression is no longer valid; that censorship and suppression are needed to avoid the subversion of politics and the corruption of morals.~ American Library Association What's right with America is a willingness to discuss what's wrong with America.~ Harry C. Bauer If your library is not ‘unsafe’, it probably isn’t doing its job.~ John Berry It will be asked whether one would care to have one's young daughter read these books. I suppose that by the time she is old enough to wish to read them she will have learned the biologic facts of life and the words that go with them. There is something seriously wrong at home if those facts have not been met and faced and sorted by then; it is not children so much as parents that should receive our concern about this. I should prefer that my own three daughters meet the facts of life and the literature of the world in my library than behind a neighbor's barn, for I can face the adversary there directly. If the young ladies are appalled by what they read, they can close the book at the bottom of page one; if they read further, they will learn what is in the world and in its people, and no parents who have been discerning with their children need fear the outcome. Nor can they hold it back, for life is a series of little battles and minor issues, and the burden of choice is on us all, every day, young and old~ Judge Curtis Bok I have always imagined that Paradise will be a kind of library.~ Jorge Luis Borges 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 I choose free libraries as the best agencies for improving the masses of the people, because they give nothing for nothing. They only help those who help themselves. They never pauperize. They reach the aspiring and open to these chief treasures of the world -- those stored up in books. A taste for reading drives out lower tastes.~ Andrew Carnegie The public library is the most dangerous place in town.~ John Ciardi A library, to modify the famous metaphor of Socrates, should be the delivery room for the birth of ideas – a place where history comes to life.~ Norman Cousins If librarianship is the connecting of people to ideas – and I believe that is the truest definition of what we do – it is crucial to remember that we must keep and make available, not just good ideas and noble ideas, but bad ideas, silly ideas, and yes, even dangerous or wicked ideas.~ Graceanne A. Decandido A truly great library contains something in it to offend everyone.~ Jo Godwin I have often thought that nothing would do more extensive good at small expense than the establishment of a small circulating library in every county, to consist of a few well-chosen books, to be lent to the people of the country under regulations as would secure their safe return in due time.~ Thomas Jefferson 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 Nothing is so galling to a people not broken in from birth as a paternal, or, in other words, a meddling government, a government which tells them what to read, and say, and eat, and drink and wear.~ Thomas Babington Macaulay The dissenter is every human being at those times of his life when he resigns momentarily from the herd and thinks for himself.~ Archibald Macleish Freedom is the right to choose: the right to create for oneself the alternatives of choice. Without the possibility of choice and the exercise of choice a man is not a man but a member, an instrument, a thing.~ Archibald MacLeish Next 20 quotes Share on Facebook Tweet Email Print