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.
A book is a loaded gun in the house next door...Who knows who might be the target of the well-read man?
If someone comes to you with, 'It's my kid's graduation,' you don't tell them, 'Sorry, you can't go to that.' You just don't do that. You figure out some other way.
As a kid I would get my parents to drop me off at my local library on their way to work during the summer holidays and I would walk home at night. For several years I read the children's library until I finished the children's library. Then I moved into the adult library and slowly worked my way through them.
The idea that children are passive repositories to be shaped by their parents has been massively overstated. A child's peer group is a far greater determinant of its development and achievements than parental aspiration.
Ordinary people simply don't know what books mean to us, shut up here. Reading, learning, and the radio are our amusements.
I think that the training of architects allows you to see what will happen ten years ahead of time, or twenty. It's not guessing, it's not intuitive, it's based on research - and we may be wrong.
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