"Habermas's ideal of unfettered communication is a natural fit for librarianship: By building diverse voices, perspectives, and arguments into our collections and services, we keep alive the means of realizing true democracy--by transcending our nation's historical shortcomings of exclusion and discrimination, and our profession's similar shortcomings, through the struggle to include censored works and underserved groups."
"Like education, our field has been called upon to play a so-called crucial role in bringing about the information society and the new economy, but without the public funding for that expanded economic mission."
"We are a society out of balance--tilted too much toward business and market solutions and too far from the ideals of a true public and a democratic society. Perhaps more disturbing is our unawareness of the historical fact that we as a society used to regard our public institutions differently and managed them with the goal in mind of furthering the public good. The new economic model of public philosophy has become both the reason and the method to reform and shape public policy for a generation now, directly shaping priorities that determine the spending for and mission of public cultural institutions."
"A private consulting firm suggested that the word "public" be dropped in describing schools because it 'has come to have negative connotations' with such entities as public libraries, public radio, and public assistance [...]. We should stand apart from--and even in opposition to--the shift to a democracy of consumers where the only voters are those who can afford the privilege."
"Our ideas about our profession and our institutions should be more expansive, more democratic, truer to our principles, and not merely limited to what is good for the economy."
All of these quotes are from the article "Staying Public: The Real Crisis in Librarianship" by John Buschman.
In honor of Martin Luther King, Jr, here are 10 quotes that are my favorites.
1. A genuine leader is not a searcher for consensus but a molder of consensus.
2. A nation or civilization that continues to produce soft-minded men purchases its own spiritual death on the installment plan.
3. A nation that continues year after year to spend more money on military defense than on programs of social uplift is approaching spiritual doom.
4. Almost always, the creative dedicated minority has made the world better.
5. At the center of non-violence stands the principle of love.
6. Darkness cannot drive out darkness; only light can do that. Hate cannot drive out hate; only love can do that.
7. Every man must decide whether he will walk in the light of creative altruism or in the darkness of destructive selfishness.
8. Have we not come to such an impasse in the modern world that we must love our enemies - or else? The chain reaction of evil - hate begetting hate, wars producing more wars - must be broken, or else we shall be plunged into the dark abyss of annihilation.
9. History will have to record that the greatest tragedy of this period of social transition was not the strident clamor of the bad people, but the appalling silence of the good people.
10. I have decided to stick with love. Hate is too great a burden to bear.
