“The time was when a library was very like a museum and the librarian a watch-dog of its contents. The time is when a library is a school, and the librarian in the highest sense a teacher.”— Melvil Dewey
“The library is the temple of learning, and learning has liberated more people than all the wars in history.”— Vartan Gregorian
“You will find the key to everything in books. And the door to everything in the library.”— Andrew Lang
“A great library is a place of refreshment, a place of solace, a place of inspiration.”— Nicholson Baker
“A library outranks any other one thing a community can do to benefit its people. It is a never failing spring in the desert.”— Andrew Carnegie
“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
“The public library is a center of public happiness first, of public education next.”— John Cotton Dana
“A library's function is to give the public in the quickest and cheapest way information, inspiration, and recreation.”— Melvil Dewey