Librarians From The United States

"Who dares to teach must never cease to learn."

"A great department store, easily reached, open at all hours, is more like a good museum of art than any of the museums we have yet established."

"The great gain would be freedom of thought. Women, more than men, are bound by tradition and authority. What the father, the brother, the doctor, and the minister have said has been received undoubtingly. Until women throw off this reverence for authority they will not develop. When they do this, when they come to truth through their investigations, when doubt leads them to discovery, the truth which they get will be theirs, and their minds will work on and on unfettered."

"Study as if you were going to live forever; live as if you were going to die tomorrow."

"There is a God, and he is good, I say to myself. I try to increase my trust in this, my only article of creed."

"Every formula which expresses a law of nature is a hymn of praise to God."

"An English village could never be mistaken for an American one: the outline against the sky differs; a thatched cottage makes a very wavy line on the blue above."

"There is this great danger in student life. Now, we rest all upon what Socrates said, or what Copernicus taught; how can we dispute authority which has come down to us, all established, for ages? We must at least question it; we cannot accept anything as granted, beyond the first mathematical formulae. Question everything else."

"I know I shall be called heterodox, and that unseen lightning flashes and unheard thunderbolts will be playing around my head, when I say that women will never be profound students in any other department except music while they give four hours a day to the practice of music. I should by all means encourage every woman who is born with musical gifts to study music; but study it as a science and an art, and not as an accomplishment; and to every woman who is not musical, I should say, 'Don't study it at all;' you cannot afford four hours a day, out of some years of your life, just to be agreeable in company upon possible occasions. If for four hours a day you studied, year after year, the science of language, for instance, do you suppose you would not be a linguist? Do you put the mere pleasing of some social party, and the reception of a few compliments, against the mental development of four hours a day of study of something for which you were born? When I see that girls who are required by their parents to go through with the irksome practising really become respectable performers, I wonder what four hours a day at something which they loved, and for which God designed them, would do for them. I should think that to a real scientist in music there would be something mortifying in this rush of all women into music; as there would be to me if I saw every girl learning the constellations, and then thinking she was an astronomer!"

"We especially need imagination in science. It is not all mathematics, nor all logic, but it is somewhat beauty and poetry. There will come with the greater love of science greater love to one another. Living more nearly to Nature is living farther from the world and from its follies, but nearer to the world's people; it is to be of them, with them, and for them, and especially for their improvement. We cannot see how impartially Nature gives of her riches to all, without loving all, and helping all; and if we cannot learn through Nature's laws the certainty of spiritual truths, we can at least learn to promote spiritual growth while we are together, and live in a trusting hope of a greater growth in the future."

"We felt the universe wuz safe, an' God wuz on his throne."

"A hundred thousand men were led By one calf near three centuries dead; They followed still his crooked way And lost a hundred years a day; For thus such reverence is lent To well-established precedent."

"Strew gladness on the paths of men— You will not pass this way again."

"I say the very things that make the greatest Stir An' the most interestin' things, are things that did n't occur."

"There are purple grapes in the Land of Git-Thare."

"He had a startling genius, but somehow it did n't emerge; Always on the evolution of things that would n't evolve; Always verging toward some climax, but he never reached the verge; Always nearing the solution of some theme he could not solve."

"The sweet mellifluous milking of the cow."

"Bring me men to match my mountains, Bring me men to match my plains, Men with empires in their purpose, And new eras in their brains."

"The White House has disinvited the poets/to a cultural tea in honor of poetry/after the Secret Service got wind of a plot/to fill Mrs. Bush’s ears with anti-war verse./Were they afraid the poets might persuade/a sensitive girl who always loved to read,/a librarian who stocked the shelves with Poe/and Dickinson? Or was she herself afraid/to be swayed by the cooing doves, and live at odds/with the screaming hawks in her family?/The Latina maids are putting away the cups/and the silver spoons, sad to be missing out/on música they seldom get to hear/in the hallowed halls. . . The valet sighs/as he rolls the carpets up and dusts the blinds./Damn but a little Langston would be good/in this dreary mausoleum of a place!/Why does the White House have to be so white?/The chef from Baton Rouge is starved for verse/uncensored by Homeland Security./NO POETRY UNTIL FURTHER NOTICE!/Instead the rooms are vacuumed and set up/for closed-door meetings planning an attack/against the ones who always bear the brunt/of silencing: the poor, the powerless,/the ones who serve, those bearing poems, not arms./So why be afraid of us, Mrs. Bush?/you’re married to a scarier fellow./We bring you tidings of great joy-/not only peace but poetry on earth."

"("In February of 2003, the first lady had cancelled a White House poetry symposium honoring Emily Dickinson, Langston Hughes and Walt Whitman. Laura Bush had feared the invited poets might invoke poems critical of invading Iraq. I asked Grace Paley for her response to Laura Bush’s action.") GP: Well, it was probably the most extraordinary event to happen to American poets, and Laura Bush did it. It couldn’t have happened, though, really, without — you know, when people say, “What can poets do?” I often say, “Just what any other working group could do to get anything accomplished, and that is to organize.”...So I owe — we — all poets owe a great deal to Laura Bush, Sam Hamill and the computer, because, as this happened, within about two days, there were about — I don’t know — 15,000 poets writing letters, writing, sending poems to Laura Bush, poems of protest."

"The Center is designed to be human in scale, because, like the White House, presidential libraries belong to all Americans. The people across our nation were the ones who inspired us every day. Here, we remember the heartbreak and the heroism of September 11th, and the bravery of those who answered the call to defend our country. We remember the volunteers of all ages and all walks of life who came to the Gulf Coast following Hurricane Katrina. And we remember all the people who step forward to help others -- whether to teach a child to read, or to feed a hungry family."

"A presidential library is not just about one president; each library is about our nation and the world during that time. The George W. Bush Presidential Center reflects George’s role as the first president of the 21st century. Like our new era, the building and its grounds are designed to be forward-looking, and they’re green and sustainable. They celebrate the native environment of our home state of Texas. The archives housed here are completely digital. And the entire Bush Center is designed to present the past and engage the future. We welcome scholars, and students, and the community at large to gather here for generations to come."

"In the United States, the presidency is not just about one person. The presidency is about all of the people who join with that president in years of service to our remarkable nation. They are the people who never fly on Air Force One, but who put in countless late nights and earlier mornings, who spend less time with their family and friends and more time hard at work caring for our country. The presidency is about the men and women of our military who serve every president and who make the ultimate sacrifice to protect us and keep us safe. The stones in the walls represent your years of service."

"Libraries allow children to ask questions about the world and find the answers. And the wonderful thing is that once a child learns to use a library, the doors to learning are always open."

"The power of a book lies in its power to turn a solitary act into a shared vision. As long as we have books, we are not alone."

"When I was in my 20s, I was a bookworm — spent 12 hours of the day in the library. How I met George, I'll never know."

"Ann Curry: You know the American people are suffering watching -- Mrs. Bush: Believe me, no one suffers more than their president and I do when we watch this, and certainly the commander in chief, who has asked our military to go into harm's way."

"I also want to encourage anyone who has been affected by hurricane Ka, uh, Karina..."

"Mrs. Bush: I don’t think there is anything wrong with singing it in Spanish. The point is it’s the United States national anthem and what people want is it to be sung in a way that respects the United States and our culture. At the same time, we are a nation of immigrants. We are a nation of many, many languages, because immigrants come and bring their languages. Larry King: Is that an issue you disagree with your husband? He says it should be sung in English. Mrs. Bush: I think it should be sung in English, of course."

"All people need to know how AIDS is transmitted, and every country has an obligation to educate its citizens. This is why every country must also improve literacy, especially for women and girls, so that they can make wise choices that will keep them healthy and safe."

"Education is spreading hope. Millions are now learning to live with HIV/AIDS — instead of waiting to die from it."

"AIDS respects no national boundaries; spares no race or religion; devastates men and women, rich and poor. No country can ignore this crisis. Fighting AIDS is an urgent calling — because every life, in every land, has value and dignity."

"In contrast to my husband, I can pronounce the word nuclear."

"In almost every single way, George and I share the same values. And if we differ on some issues, it's very, very minor."

"We talk about issues, but I'm not his adviser, I'm his wife... I find that it's really best not to give your spouse a lot of advice. I don't want a lot of advice from him."

"I'm not wild about the term first lady. I'd just like to be called Laura Bush."

"Every child in American should have access to a well-stocked school library. … An investment in libraries is an investment in our children's future."

"A love of books, of holding a book, turning its pages, looking at its pictures, and living its fascinating stories goes hand-in-hand with a love of learning."

"Our attitude toward our own culture has recently been characterized by two qualities, braggadocio and petulance. Braggadocio —- empty boasting of American power, American virtue, American know-how —- has dominated our foreign relations now for some decades. ... Here at home —- within the family, so to speak —- our attitude to our culture expresses a superficially different spirit, the spirit of petulance. Never before, perhaps, has a culture been so fragmented into groups, each full of its own virtue, each annoyed and irritated at the others."

"The cities of Italy are now deluged with droves of these creatures [tour groups], for they never separate, and you see them, forty in number, pouring along a street with their director — now in front, now at the rear, circling them like a sheep dog — and really the process is as like herding as may be."

"The American settlers came to take and shape the land. The first occupants of the land — the "Indians" whom the European migrants encountered — would not be treated, in the pattern of the Romans, as people to be incorporated into an empire. Instead, they were treated as part of the landscape. Most of them were simply cleared away, like the forest, or pushed back, like the wilderness."

"The Republic of Technology where we will be living is a feedback world."

"We must first awake before we can walk in the right direction. We must discover our illusions before we can even realize that we have been sleepwalking. The least and the most we can hope for is that each of us may penetrate the unknown jungle of images in which we live our daily lives. That we may discover anew where dreams end and where illusions begin. This is enough. Then we may know where we are, and each of us may decide for himself where he wants to go."

"As individuals and as a nation, we now suffer from social narcissism. The beloved Echo of our ancestors, the virgin America. has been abandoned. We have fallen in love with our own image, with images of our making, which turn out to be images of ourselves."

"Of all nations in the world, the United States was built in nobody's image. It was the land of the unexpected, of unbounded hope, of ideals, of quest for an unknown perfection. It is all the more unfitting that we should offer ourselves in images. And all the more fitting that the images which we make wittingly or unwittingly to sell America to the world should come back to haunt and curse us."

"A sign of a celebrity is often that his name is worth more than his services."

"By a diabolical irony the very facsimiles of the world which we make on purpose to bring it within our grasp, to make it less elusive, have transported us into a new world of blurs."

"The image, more interesting than its original, has become the original. The shadow has become the substance."

"A celebrity is a person who is known for his well-knownness."

"Celebrity-worship and hero-worship should not be confused. Yet we confuse them every day, and by doing so we come dangerously close to depriving ourselves of all real models. We lose sight of the men and women who do not simply seem great because they are famous but are famous because they are great. We come closer and closer to degrading all fame into notoriety."