The only condition a library asks its users to honor is to do justice to their own imagination, their own curiosity and their own thirst for knowledge, and in the process, to achieve their own independence of mind and spirit.
Interpretation
Libraries encourage individuals to explore their imagination and pursue knowledge for independence.
This quote emphasizes the role of libraries in cultivating a sense of curiosity and imagination among their users. By honoring their own thirst for knowledge, individuals can achieve intellectual and spiritual independence, which is essential for personal growth and enlightenment.
In practice
During a keynote speech at a literacy conference, to emphasize the importance of libraries in fostering imagination.
That is the future, and it is probably nearer than we think. But our primary problem as universities is not engineering that future. We must rise above the obsession with quantity of information and speed of transmission, and recognize that the key issue for us is our ability to organize this information once it has been amassed - to assimilate it, find meaning in it, and assure its survival for use by generations to come.
The library is not only a diary of the human race, but marks an act of faith in the continuity of humanity.
People don't know how to listen, and it's not their fault. In school, we learn how to read, we learn how to write - but nobody teaches you how to listen.
We spend all our time teaching reading and writing. We spend absolutely no time at all, in most schools, teaching either speaking or, more importantly still, listening.
The child who has been taught to make an accurate elevation, plan, and section of a pint pot has had an admirable training in accuracy of eye and hand.
Keep your hands moving. Writing is rewriting.
Surely, we've got a way that we can tinker with this system that shuttles our children from decrepit, underfunded schools to brand-new high-tech prisons.
I've been at this for 40 years. And, as an academic, I've been content with relatively small audiences, with the thought that the audience I long for will find its way eventually to what I have written, provided that what I have written is good enough.
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