Scott Douglas > Quotes

“When I tell people I went to library school, the most common reaction is either “You’re joking, right?” or “They have schools for librarians? Do they teach you how to properly sssh people?”
― Scott Douglas

“It took a bit of popcorn and a library snack bar to make me realize that being a librarian was about more than just giving people information. It was about serving a community. And if the community is hungry for more than just knowledge, then maybe it’s about time to open a snack bar.”
― Scott Douglas

“There was the smell of old books, a smell that has a way of making all libraries seem the same. Some say that smell is asbestos. ”
― Scott Douglas, Quiet, Please: Dispatches From A Public Librarian

“I am convinced that grandkids are inherently evil people who tell their grandparents to "just go to the library and open up an e-mail account - it's free and so simple.”
― Scott Douglas, Quiet, Please: Dispatches From A Public Librarian

“We don’t have to destroy the library of the past. We just need to give it a face-lift.”
― Scott Douglas

“I like to imagine that library school was started because of some sort of silly bar bet where a guy got really plastered and told his buddy that he could convince people that librarians needed to be trained in the art of librarianship. Sadly, this is not the case; its roots are a bit more academic.”
― Scott Douglas

“There’s something deep in the heart of every person that wants
to protect culture. The only thing about my pending career that
was changed because of 9/11 was that I began to see it was the community,
not the librarian, that was important to the library. Librarians
were only as important as the community they inspired. If I
was going to continue with this career, my job wouldn’t be to protect
information, it would be to bring the community together and
inspire them to appreciate everything a library stands for.”
― Scott Douglas

“The loudest elderly women always had the quietest elderly husbands.”
― Scott Douglas

“It makes logical sense that 168 is a greater number than 17, so why would you shelve 168 first? Because a librarian is always right. To the common man, this looks wrong, but to the librarian, this is right, because a librarian is never wrong.”
― Scott Douglas

“A library was nothing without its people. You say library and there’s this iconoclastic image of an old-lady librarian telling people to be quiet and not to run. But the thing was, that lady—that iconoclastic lady—was with us when we cleaned. She wore blue jeans, too. Maybe she was what people thought about when you said library, but she didn’t make the library. People made the library. That’s what made a library. Without them, all the sacredness was gone. It was just a building with books.”
― Scott Douglas

“...killing rats wasn’t in my job description.”
― Scott Douglas

“To be great at something, you must look to the great ones of the
past and improve on the ideas and techniques that they started. I
was motivated to do better—to improve on the ideas of others.”
― Scott Douglas

“The library—the place in my life that was full of books—beagan to teach me that books weren't everything.”
― Scott Douglas, Quiet, Please: Dispatches From A Public Librarian

“Plenty of patrons had asked me strange things, but this was the first who asked me where my car was parked. It was almost comical to look at the man, because he actually thought I was going to tell him. I struggled to come up with a reply, but the best I could muster was, "That's personal." What I meant to say was, "Sir, the fact that I work in a public library doesn't make me stupid, it just makes me poor. There's no way I'm going to tell you—a psychotic person who could very well have a knife in his pocket—where I have parked my car.”
― Scott Douglas, Quiet, Please: Dispatches From A Public Librarian

“I began to see it was the community, not the librarian, that was important to the library. Librarians were only as important as the community they inspired. If I was going to continue with this career, my job wouldn’t be to protect information, it would be to bring the community together and inspire them to appreciate everything a library stands for.”
― Scott Douglas, Quiet, Please: Dispatches From A Public Librarian

“It's a cruel world, and unless you're blessed with some talent people will pay money to see, your friends are the only people who will get you where you need to go.”
― Scott Douglas, Quiet, Please: Dispatches From A Public Librarian

“The longer you go to church the easier it is to forget one of Jesus’s greatest lessons: the kingdom of heaven belongs to children.6 To really understand God, it’s best to strip everything away, to get rid of all the distractions and see God as a child might.”
― Scott Douglas, #OrganicJesus: Finding Your Way to an Unprocessed, Gmo-Free Christianity

“Level 7 Selling Our Souls for a Video Game, Part One”
― Scott Douglas, The N00b Warriors

“Religion by its very principle is not always logical; in essence, faith is believing in something you cannot understand with rational thought.”
― Scott Douglas, #OrganicJesus: Finding Your Way to an Unprocessed, Gmo-Free Christianity

“Even the most liberal religious scholars will agree on two things: one, the baptism of Jesus happened; and two, the crucifixion was real.”
― Scott Douglas, #OrganicJesus: Finding Your Way to an Unprocessed, Gmo-Free Christianity

“Christianity in my youth wasn’t just the right choice; it was the only choice.”
― Scott Douglas, #OrganicJesus: Finding Your Way to an Unprocessed, Gmo-Free Christianity

“The problem with feelings is not the warmth you feel in good times; it’s the coldness you feel in the dark times.”
― Scott Douglas, #OrganicJesus: Finding Your Way to an Unprocessed, Gmo-Free Christianity

“I have to wonder now…while the government’s off making money with its so-called “business,” who governs the country? And I, for one, am just a little frightened of the thought that the future of our country depends on the gaming habits of our children. Will the President propose tomorrow that I let my son or daughter play video games because it supports the country? Will video games replace textbooks in school?!”
― Scott Douglas, The N00b Warriors

“People will certainly continue to say old things in a fresh new way to keep the study contemporary, but that doesn’t change the fact that, barring an archaeological discovery to blow us all out of the water, Christian theology is probably not going to change very much.”
― Scott Douglas, #OrganicJesus: Finding Your Way to an Unprocessed, Gmo-Free Christianity

“Running Is My Therapy: Relieve Stress and Anxiety, Fight Depression, and Live Happier”
― Scott Douglas, Running Is My Therapy: Relieve Stress and Anxiety, Fight Depression, Ditch Bad Habits, and Live Happier

“I don’t want to believe because I’m crazy. I want to believe because it’s true.”
― Scott Douglas, #OrganicJesus: Finding Your Way to an Unprocessed, Gmo-Free Christianity

“Fear is not a bad thing, soldier. We all have fears. Fear only becomes bad when you become so afraid of that fear that you freeze, and you let that fear take control of you so much that you cannot fight.”
― Scott Douglas, The N00b Warriors