Quotes About Literacy

I never read a single book as a child. I did not read as a child. I worked on the farm. I had books in the classroom, but that was it. I never read a single book outside of the classroom.

We read to our kids at bedtime because we want to have literacy, but what are we doing to make sure kids are equally fascinated by science?

At base, financial literacy is inextricably connected to control over one's future.

I'm not good at finding 'encouraging' features in American culture. I doubt that aesthetic literacy has much of a future here.

To me, letters have always been a robust medium of sublimation. I don't remember what I was like before I learned my ABC's, but for as long as I can remember I have made them with my fingers and felt them in my bones.

I'm a firm believer in reading actual books.

You have people who believe they are scientifically literate but, in fact, are not. And I don't mind if you're not scientifically literate, but just admit that to yourself, so that you'll know, and perhaps you can take a first step to try to eradicate that.

The whites, who are educated and civilized, swindle me, and I am not hard to swindle because I do not know how to read and write.

Friends and brothers, The Almighty created us Indians. We are as he made us. The Almighty has given to the whites a book to read, and they have plenty of things to work with. The Indian has no book. He cannot read.

A person who won't read has no advantage over one who can't read.

I much prefer working with kids whose life could be completely upended by a reading of a book over a weekend. You give them a book to read - they go home and come back a changed person. And that is so much more interesting and exciting.

Why buy a book when you can join a library.

A drop in younger children visiting libraries is of great concern. As children's laureate, I am passionate about the role of libraries, both in schools and in the wider community. They are unique places where children can begin their journey as readers, as well as being creative hubs.

The greatest preventative to terrorism is Muslim religious literacy.

If you want to be a modern citizen of the world, you have to be minimally capable in technology. It's a new literacy test. Technology rules your outcome in life. And software is making a lot of decisions in our lives.

For professionals who use massage in their work, and especially for developing their leadership, historical literacy is imperative.

But to worship at the altar of "just read" fails to see reading for what it actually is: a complex and nuanced interplay of decoding, vocabulary, subject matter, and contextual knowledge. Well-intended but misguided teachers and administrators have imposed a kind of illiteracy on low-income children of color by focusing their attention relentlessly in the mirror, instead of out the window. Reading comprehension is not a skill you teach but a condition you create.

EBooks, is it. Or as a wise man once said, "bringing the otherwise unpublishable to the mostly illiterate".

A computer does not substitute for judgment any more than a pencil substitutes for literacy. But writing ability without a pencil is no particular advantage.

How much better off the poor man would be if he devoted himself to reading.

Had he his way, paper would be as common as bread, and every child would learn his letters before he was thirteen. But even were it so, I do not think this would bring to pass all he hopes. He mourns of all the knowledge that goes into a grave each time a man dies, even the commonest of men.

If you can read, you can learn anything.

As long as Christianity is the dominant belief system in America, we cannot afford to be biblically or theologically illiterate, regardless of our personal beliefs. (p. 8)

I don't have any kids, so I'm not as worried about my heirs as the rest of you, but still: I think the youth of tomorrow might be better off if they knew the physical sensation of cracking a spine and turning the page.