A Quote by John Allen Paulos

The Internet is the world's largest library. It's just that all the books are on the floor.

John Allen Paulos

Quote Topics

Books Floor Internet Just Largest Library World

Quote Author

John Allen Paulos
American - Professor
Born: July 4, 1945

There were a lot of things I loved about working in a library, but mostly I miss the library patrons. I love books, but books are everywhere. Library patrons are as various and oddball and democratic as library books.

Elizabeth McCracken

Come indoors then, and open the books on your library shelves. For you have a library and a good one. A working library, a living library; a library where nothing is chained down and nothing is locked up; a library where the songs of the singers rise naturally from the lives of the livers.

Virginia Woolf

Jane Austen's books, too, are absent from this library. Just that one omission alone would make a fairly good library out of a library that hadn't a book in it.

Mark Twain

In design-speak, 'a library' means a room lined with books, floor-to ceiling, but it all depends on the space you have. You may have a free-standing bookshelf of your favorite books if that's all you have room for.

Nate Berkus

I don't think we should see the world of books as fundamentally separate from the world of the Internet. Yes, the Internet contains a lot of videos of squirrels riding skateboards, but it can also be a place that facilitates big conversations about books.

John Green

Even as the Internet has revived hope of a universal library and Google seems to promise an answer to every query, books have remained a dark region in the universe of information. We want books to be as accessible and searchable as the Web. On the other hand, we still want them to be books.

Gary Wolf

They say there is no 'free lunch' in life. But there are free books! I still can't believe I can go to my local library and get just abut any book in the world - and I don't have to pay a dime!! It's amazing! The library is truly the greatest invention of our civilization.

Dan Gutman

The tallest building in the world is now in Dubai, the biggest factory in the world is in China, the largest oil refinery is in India, the largest investment fund in the world is in Abu Dhabi, the largest Ferris wheel in the world is in Singapore.

Fareed Zakaria

The library world is set up on this model where the library is a physical building and has a number of books and serves a geographical community.

Aaron Swartz

Books in a large university library system: 2,000,000. Books in an average large city library: 10,000. Average number of books in a chain bookstore: 30,000. Books in an average neighborhood branch library: 20,000.

Anthony Burgess

I grew up in a small town with a very small library. But the books in the library opened a large place in my heart. It is the place where stories live. And those stories have been informing my days, comforting my nights, and extending possibilities ever since. If that library had not been there, if the books - such as they were - had not been free, my world would be poor, even today.

Marion Dane Bauer

I couldn't live a week without a private library - indeed, I'd part with all my furniture and squat and sleep on the floor before I'd let go of the 1500 or so books I possess.

H. P. Lovecraft

Boston had the first public library, Liverpool had the first lending library. Both cities have pioneered medical advancements during the decades and both have the largest economic powers in the world exactly 213 miles to the south by car.

John W. Henry

One summer I was homeless in L.A., when I was about fifteen, and I used to go to the library to get books. I would have books in abandoned cars, in the seats, cubby holes on the L.A. River, just to have books wherever I could keep them, I just loved to have books. And that really helped me. I didn't realize it was going to be my destiny; I didn't know I was going to be a writer.

Luis J. Rodriguez

Living wild species are like a library of books still unread. Our heedless destruction of them is akin to burning the library without ever having read its books.