For those of us in the United States, today is Independence Day. Our friend Paul posted this quote today on his blog, PK in the Terrarium, and it’s so fitting, I thought I’d “borrow” it to share with you here.

“The only way to make a library safe is to lock people out of it. As long as they are allowed to read the books ‘any old time they have a mind to,’ libraries will remain the nurseries of heresy and independence of thought. They will, in fact, preserve that freedom which is a far more important part of our lives than any ideology or orthodoxy, the freedom that dissolves orthodoxies and inspires solutions to the ever-changing challenges of the future. I hope that your library and mine will continue in this way to be dangerous for many years to come.”

– Edmund S. Morgan, in the essay “Dangerous Books” (reprinted in his splendid new book American Heroes)

Now I’m off to the beach.

Image credit: sunsurfr via Flickr