80 Library Quotes That Will Make You Want to Sit Down With a Good Book

These library quotes will make you wish you were browsing the rows and rows of books at your local library.

Libraries are one of the greatest resources that the world has put at our fingertips.

They are jam-packed with books, and now computers that can teach you just about anything you want to know.

And cities work hard to put libraries in as many areas as they can to make them easily accessible for everyone. 

You can escape into a fantasy world at your local library through a book or dive deep into researching something you’re curious about.

It’s all up to you. 

You can choose a famous book or a lesser-known title.

Below you’ll find our collection of inspirational, wise, and thought-provoking library quotes and sayings collected from various sources over the years.

Don’t forget to check out these reading quotes that will expand your mind.

If you like this article, we suggest you explore our most popular quotes article, a list of short inspirational quotes for daily encouragement. 

Check out more inspirational quotes on our motivational quotes category page.

Library quotes on the importance of libraries

1. “If you have a garden and a library, you have everything you need.” – Marcus Tullius Cicero

2. “Who doesn’t love a library? It is a place you can go in any town and discover the world.” – Pat MacEnulty

You will also enjoy our article on quotes about reading.

3. “Books constitute capital. A library book lasts as long as a house, for hundreds of years. It is not, then, an article of mere consumption but fairly of capital, and often in the case of professional men, setting out in life, it is their only capital.” – Thomas Jefferson

4. “The three most important documents a free society gives are a birth certificate, a passport and a library card.” – E.L. Doctorow

5. “The only thing you absolutely have to know is the location of the library.” – Albert Einstein

6. “To build up a library is to create a life.” – Carlos Maria Dominguez

You will also enjoy our article on bookstore quotes.

7. “What is more important in a library than anything else – than everything else – is the fact that it exists.” – Archibald MacLeish

8. “Cutting libraries in a recession is like cutting hospitals in a plague.” – Eleanor Crumblehulme 

9. “The public library system of the United States is worth preserving.” – Henry Rollins

10. “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

11. “Everything you need for a better future and success has already been written. And guess what? All you have to do is go to the library.” – Henri Frederic Amiel

Library quotes about the positive impact of a library

12. “I always knew from that moment, from the time I found myself at home in that little segregated library in the South, all the way up until I walked up the steps of the New York City library, I always felt, in any town, if I can get to a library, I’ll be OK. It really helped me as a child and that never left me.” – Maya Angelou

13. “A library is a place that is a repository of information and gives every citizen equal access to it. That includes health information. And mental health information. It’s a community space. It’s a place of safety, a haven from the world.” – Neil Gaiman

14. “I ransack public libraries and find them full of sunk treasure.” – Virginia Woolf

15. “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

16. “I discovered me in the library. I went to find me in the library.” – Ray Bradbury

17. “No place affords a more striking conviction of the vanity of human hopes than a public library.” – Samuel Johnson

18. “Libraries will get you through times of no money better than money will get you through times of no libraries.” – Anne Herbert

19. “Libraries are the one American institution you shouldn’t rip off.” – Barbara Kingsolver

20. “Ordinary people have big TVs. Extraordinary people have big libraries.” – Robin Sharma

21. “To those with ears to hear, libraries are really very noisy places. On their shelves we hear the captured voices of the centuries-old conversations that makes up our civilization.” – Timothy Healy

22. “A library is not a luxury but one of the necessities of life.” – Henry Ward Beecher

You might also like these Mastery quotes by Robert Greene that inspire creativity towards success.

Library quotes about reading

23. “My alma mater was books, a good library… I could spend the rest of my life reading, just satisfying my curiosity.” – Malcolm X

24. “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

25. “The richest person in the world – in fact all the riches in the world – couldn’t provide you with anything like the endless, incredible loot available at your local library.” – Malcolm Forbes

26. “We may sit in our library and yet be in all quarters of the earth.” – John Lubbock

27. “The best of my education has come from the public library… my tuition fee is a bus fare and once in a while, five cents a day for an overdue book. You don’t need to know very much to start with, if you know the way to the public library.” – Lesley Conger

28. “The greatest part of a writer’s time is spent in reading in order to write. A man will turn over half a library to make a book.” – Samuel Johnson

Love of the library quotes

29. “I couldn’t live a week without a private library – indeed, I’d part with all my furniture and squat and sleep on the floor before I’d let go of the 1500 or so books I possess.” – H.P. Lovecraft

30. “I was the kind of kid whose parents would drop him off at the local town library on their way to work, and I’d go and work my way through the children’s area.” – Neil Gaiman

31. “Your library is your paradise.” – Desiderius Erasmus

32. “I love the Web, but the basis of my work is going through the physical books. When you go to the library, you see other books around on the shelves that you never knew existed. You can flip through a book and see the whole outlines of it.” – Camille Paglia

33. “Between the ages of fifteen and twenty-four, I must have read a whole library.” – Charles Bukowski

34. “I love the place; the magnificent books; I require books as I require air.” – Sholem Asch

35. “I always tell people that I became a writer not because I went to school but because my mother took me to the library. I wanted to become a writer so I could see my name in the card catalog.” – Sandra Cisneros

Also read these training quotes and sayings to inspire you towards personal development.

Library quotes to enlighten you

36. “As the biggest library if it is in disorder is not as useful as a small but well-arranged one, so you may accumulate a vast amount of knowledge but it will be of far less value than a much smaller amount if you have not thought it over for yourself.” – Arthur Schopenhauer

37. “I must say I find television very educational. The minute somebody turns it on, I go to the library and read a good book.” – Groucho Marx

38. “In my world there would be as many public libraries as there are Starbucks.” – Henry Rollins

39. “If you want to get laid, go to college. If you want an education, go to the library.” – Frank Zappa

40. “The library lets you borrow the beauty and keep the knowledge.” – Unknown

41. “Perhaps no place in any community is so totally democratic as the town library. The only entrance requirement is interest.” – Lady Bird Johnson

42. “Without libraries what have we? We have no past and no future.” – Ray Bradbury

43. “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

44. “Half of my library are old books because I like seeing how people thought about their world at their time. So that I don’t get bigheaded about something we just discovered and I can be humble about where we might go next. Because you can see who got stuff right and most of the people who got stuff wrong.” – Neil deGrasse Tyson

45. “I have always imagined that paradise will be a kind of library.” – Gorge Luis Borges

46. “A library implies an act of faith.” – Victor Hugo

47. “Libraries are not a destination. They are the transportation. The Grand Central Station of every great city and town.” – Unknown

48. “I don’t have to look far to find treasures. I discover them every time I visit a library.” – Michael Embry

49. “Why buy a book when you can join a library?” – Ricky Gervais

50. “Library fines are my favorite charitable donation.” – Terri Guillemets

More library quotes and sayings

51. “The library is the temple of learning, and learning has liberated more people than all the wars in history.” – Carl T. Rowan

52. “Books are the quietest and most constant of friends; they are the most accessible and wisest of counselors, and the most patient of teachers.” – Charles William Eliot

53. “The more that you read, the more things you will know. The more that you learn, the more places you’ll go.” – Dr. Seuss

54. “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

55. “When I was young, we couldn’t afford much. But, my library card was my key to the world.” – John Goodman

56. “Until I feared I would lose it, I never loved to read. One does not love breathing.” – Harper Lee

57. “Libraries never let us forget who we are, for their worth stands by the knowledge they keep and save for us.” – Virginia Hamilton

58. “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

59. “Libraries: Here is where people, one frequently finds, lower their voices, and raise their minds.” – Richard Armour

60. “The true university of these days is a collection of books.” – Thomas Carlyle

Library Quotes For Research Of The Knowledge You Need

61. “Libraries always remind me that there are good things in this world.” ― Lauren Ward

62. “When in doubt go to the library.” ― J.K. Rowling

63. “A library is a house of hope. It’s a place where we all, whatever our situation, can feed our ideas and develop our dreams.” ― Doug Wilhelm

64. “Who wants a library full of books you’ve already read?” ― Harlan Ellison

65. “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

66. “What in the world would we do without our libraries?” ― Katharine Hepburn

67. “The library made me feel safe, as if every question had an answer and there was nothing to be afraid of, as long as I could sort through another volume.” ― Dee Williams

68. “Libraries were full of ideas – perhaps the most dangerous and powerful of all weapons.” ― Sarah J. Maas

69. “During the day, the library is a realm of order.” ― Alberto Manguel

70. “A library is a place where you learn what teachers were afraid to teach you.” ― Alan M. Dershowitz

Library quotes for students

71. “A library is a different kind of social reality, which by its very existence teaches a system of values beyond the fiscal.”― Zadie Smith

72. “To know your way round a library is to master the whole of culture, i.e. the whole world.”
― Sophie Divry

73. “Every time you enter a library you might say to yourself, “The world is quiet here,” as a sort of pledge proclaiming reading to be the greater good.”― Lemony Snicket

74. “Anyone who thinks this world is without magic, hasn’t been to a library.”― Amy Fellner Dominy

75. “And every book you find has its own social group–friends of its own it wants to introduce you to, like a party in the library that need never, ever end.”― Caitlin Moran

76. “A library is the delivery room for the birth of ideas, a place where history comes to life.”
― Norman Cousins

77. “All my life, the library has always been one of my favorite places to go.”― Larry Brown

78. “I’m a library user and I just don’t hoard books. To me, they’re for sharing.”― Sara Sheridan

79. “I know exactly what I would do with immortality: I would read every book in the library.”― Mark Jason Dominus

80. “The library is a symbol of freedom.”― Sara Sheridan

Which of these library quotes inspired you to put your library to work?

Some think that libraries are outdated places now that we live in a world full of technology, but that’s not true.

Libraries are working hard to offer access to the latest technologies while also providing a place for the community to come together, meet and learn. 

Many of the greatest minds in our history truly cherished their libraries.

There is a wealth of knowledge in books just waiting for us to tap into them.

The resources are there for everyone to use, now it’s up to you if you’re going to put it to work in your own life. 

Which of these library quotes and sayings inspired you to put your library to work?

Do you have any other favorite quotes to add?