Quotes About Literacy

Our first clue, included in each of the Sistine portraits of the sibyls and prophets—save one—is a scroll or a book, symbolizing literacy. Through his use of books and writing, Michelangelo is showing us that he believes these seers were the intellectuals of their respective times and places.

In fact, the Latin root of the word literacy is the same as for the word intellect: leggere, "to read." The source for the word intellectual also gives us its true meaning: inter-leggere, "to read between." An intellectual is defined by an ability to read between the lines, to analyze and to think critically, to understand things on many levels at the same time.

What condition of man most deserves pity?" - Franklin offered: "A lonesome man on a rainy day who does not know how to read.

The person who deserves most pity is a lonesome one on a rainy day who doesn't know how to read.

I think it may not be a coincidence that the rise of printing and book publication and literacy and the phenomenon of best sellers all preceded the humanitarian reforms of the Enlightenment.

Most people are excited about themselves. Personal genome will deliver for inexpensively something about science to which you can relate. Just like computers are becoming something to which you can relate. It should be even easier to relate to your own biology, and I hope that will be one of the ways we get broader literacy in science.

I would like to help out in financial literacy for the Hispanic community and the athletic community.

I had access to books, and I could read... but that more foundational, basic historical awareness, I didn't have any of that.

I started Save the Libraries in 2010 by hosting a big fundraiser in my city library of DeKalb County in Atlanta. Through that, I learned that even with fundraisers, libraries often don't make money - they just barely break even.

I grew up in a completely bookless household. It was my father's boast that he had never read a book from end to end.

I think my grandmother Woodrell was most responsible for my becoming a writer. She wasn't quite literate, but was very proud that she attended school as far as the third grade. She worked as a maid, housekeeper and cook.

I'm a huge fan of reading.

It's hard recommending books for kids, and a huge responsibility. If you get it wrong, they don't tell you they hate that particular book, they tell you they hate reading.

The great mass of humanity should never learn to read or write.

But I wasn't a well-read bookworm; I was just a dumb whore in the right library.

Through literacy you can begin to see the universe. Through music, you can reach anybody. Between the two, there is you, unstoppable.

I may not know how to fly but I know how to read, and that's almost the same thing.

Americans born since World War II have grown up in a media-saturated environment. From childhood, we have developed a sort of advertising literacy, which combines appreciation for technique with skepticism about motives. We respond to ads with at least as much rhetorical intelligence as we apply to any other form of persuasion.

Sadly, there are many children who have not yet been given the chance to 'discover the magic of reading, or set foot in the worlds you can discover on bookshelves.

I have always worried about who can read, who can't, who doesn't, and the great, life-altering consequences hidden within those distinctions.

Everything I worry about would be better if more people could read, write and comprehend.

I believe we should spend less time worrying about the quantity of books children read and more time introducing them to quality books that will turn them on to the joy of reading and turn them into lifelong readers.

The big problem is just this kind of gigantic piece, of kids reading less and liking it less and so getting worse at it. It's kind of this terrible spiral: Since they're not so good at it they do less of it, get worse at it, do less of it. And it's really what I discovered five, six years ago when I started the 'Guys Read' thing.

The public library system of the United States is worth preserving.