A library outranks any other one thing a community can do to benefit its people. It is a never failing spring in the desert.
Interpretation
A library is an invaluable resource for a community, providing knowledge and support.
This quote emphasizes the fundamental importance of libraries as a cornerstone of community development and education. Andrew Carnegie likens a library to a constant source of life and hope in a barren place, underscoring the idea that access to information and literature is crucial for the growth and well-being of individuals and society as a whole.
In practice
Using this quote in a speech at a library opening to highlight its importance.
Give me the life of the boy whose mother is nurse, seamstress, washerwoman, cook, teacher, angel, and saint, all in one, and whose father is guide, exemplar, and friend. No servants to come between. These are the boys who are born to the best fortune.
To kill a man will be considered as disgusting [in the twentieth century] as we in this day consider it disgusting to eat one.
It is not the rich man's son that the young struggler for advancement has to fear in the race for life, nor his nephew, nor his cousin. Let him look out for the dark horse in the boy who begins by sweeping out the office.
You are what you think. So just think big, believe big, act big, work big, give big, forgive big, laugh big, love big and live big.
Speculation is a parasite feeding upon values, creating none.
Don't be content with doing only your duty. Do more than your duty. It's the horse that finishes a neck ahead that wins the race.
Whatever the skill of any country may be in the sciences, it is from its excellence in polite learning alone that it must expect a character from posterity.
Of all the inanimate objects, of all men's creations, books are the nearest to us for they contain our very thoughts, our ambitions, our indignations, our illusions, our fidelity to the truth, and our persistent leanings to error. But most of all they resemble us in their precious hold on life.
The purpose of education is to replace an empty mind with an open one.
Long before I wrote stories, I listened for stories. Listening for them is something more acute than listening to them. I suppose itβs an early form of participation in what goes on. Listening children know stories are there. When their elders sit and begin, children are just waiting and hoping for one to come out, like a mouse from its hole.
Just once in a while let us exalt the importance of ideas and information.
If education is beaten by training, civilization dies.
Subscribe for the occasional hand-picked quote. No noise.