“What in the world would we do without our libraries?”
“Were we to be engaged in a war . . we should become absolutely destitute of elephants. . .What would our children do without elephants to amuse them? What would the sick do without the sight of elephants to invigorate them?”
“What do we, as a nation, care about books? How much do you think we spend altogether on our libraries, public or private, as compared to what we spend on our horses?”
“Without libraries what have we? We have no past and no future.”
“Reading is at the center of our lives. The library is our brain. Without the library, you have no civilization.”
“No world is without sacrifices. But if we produce casualties, we would also sustain casualties of our own.”