"I cannot sufficiently celebrate the glorious liberty that reigns in the public libraries of the twentieth century as compared with the intolerable management of those of the nineteenth century, in which the books were jealously railed away from the people, and obtainable only at an expenditure of time and red tape calculated to discourage any ordinary taste for literature."

Source : Edward Bellamy (2000). “Looking Backward: From 2000 to 1887”, p.101, Applewood Books

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