Quotes About Literacy

to know how to read is to light a lamp in the mind, to release the soul from prison, to open a gate to the universe.

I am never better pleased than when I know a book of mine can be bought for fifty cents or, better still, for twenty-five. No people can be educated or even cultivated until books are cheap enough for everybody to buy.

Schools are really bad now. Schools are not only bad in reading, writing and arithmetic, they're worse in cultural aspects, like in music and art. They don't teach you anything.

She'd like to model or maybe act or star in a magazine. Before she signs any big contracts, she better learn how to read.

Do you know how to read?" "No. It is one of the black arts." He nodded. "But a useful one," he said.

Do not let reading become a forgotten art

In 1800 probably only 2 to 3 percent of the citizens of the Ottoman Empire were literate, compared with 60 percent of adult males and 40 percent of adult females in England. In the Netherlands and Germany, literacy rates were even higher. The Ottoman lands lagged far behind the European countries with the lowest educational attainment in this period, such as Portugal, where probably only around 20 percent of adults could read and write. Given

Books spread ideas and make the population much harder to control. Some of these ideas may be valuable new ways to increase economic growth, but others may be subversive and challenge the existing political and social status quo. Books also undermine the power of those who control oral knowledge, since they make that knowledge readily available to anyone who can master literacy. This threatened to undermine the existing status quo, where knowledge was controlled by elites.

The best advice I ever got was that knowledge is power and to keep reading...

People who read are a lot more tolerant than people who don't.

Because our current educational system now graduates students lacking even minimal historical knowledge, citizens are misled by outlandish charges Modernists make about not only Jefferson but also other Founders as well as traditionally venerated historical events. If rudimentary historical literacy is to be achieved today, it must be individually secured, for it is no longer possible to rely on public schools (and even many private schools) for this once elementary knowledge

T]o really try to be informed and literate today is to feel stupid nearly all the time, and to need help.

To be a well-favoured man is the gift of fortune; but to write and read comes by nature.

Such was the vainglory of a black boy who may have been alone among his race in bondage to have actually read pages from Sir Walter Scott and who knew the product of nine multiplied by nine, the name of the President of the United States, the existence of the continent of Asia, the capital of the state of New Jersey, and could spell words like Deuteronomy, Revelation, Nehemiah, Chesapeake, Southampton, and Shenandoah.

Kids had made fun of him in elementary school because his father wanted him to be literate, not just functionally literate, or 'iconerate,' the new term for those who went through life using only symbols and key words for written communication.

Malnutrition of the reading faculty is a serious thing.   Let us prescribe for you.

That's what this country needs -- more books!

At first, I struggled with some of the bigger words, but Kinsella kept his fingernail under each, patiently, until I guessed it or half-guessed it and then I did this by myself until I no longer needed to guess, and read on. It was like learning to ride the bike; I felt myself taking off, the freedom of going places I couldn't have gone before, and it was easy.

As computers replace textbooks, students will become more computer literate and more book illiterate. They'll be exploring virtual worlds, watching dancing triangles, downloading the latest web sites. But they won't be reading books.

It's easy to mistake familiarity with computers for intelligence, but computer literate certainly doesn't equal smart. And computer illiterate sure doesn't mean stupid. Which do we need more: computer literacy or literacy?

Reading to small children is a specialty.

If you read a lot of books, you're considered well-read. But if you watch a lot of TV, you're not considered well-viewed!

optimal literacy teaching and learning can only be achieved when skillful, knowledgeable, and dedicated teachers are given the freedom and latitude to use their professional judgment to make instructional decisions that enable students to achieve their full literacy potential.

For almost a century since 1918, the centralised nation-state has been the world's default political form. Its various experiments in industrialisation, urbanisation, mass literacy and consumerism have brought more people into public life.