Literacy Quotes

Most of the world's problems will be solved if literacy prevailed.

My bursting heart must find vent at my pen.

No one is truly literate who cannot read his own heart.

All that mankind has done, thought, gained, or been; it is lying as in magic preservation in the pages of books.

If people in the media cannot decide whether they are in the business of reporting news or manufacturing propaganda, it is all the more important that the public understand that difference, and choose their news sources accordingly.

I realized that every lesson, conference, response, and assignment I taught must lead students away from me and toward their autonomy as literate people.

The world of books, the greatest possessions.

Who made you Queen of Literacy? Go sit in your car!

Growing Literacy of the Heart and Mind Cultivates the Landscape of a Child's Future.

Fairy tales in childhood are stepping stones throughout life, leading the way through trouble and trial. The value of fairy tales lies not in a brief literary escape from reality, but in the gift of hope that goodness truly is more powerful than evil and that even the darkest reality can lead to a Happily Ever After. Do not take that gift of hope lightly. It has the power to conquer despair in the midst of sorrow, to light the darkness in the valleys of life, to whisper “One more time” in the face of failure. Hope is what gives life to dreams, making the fairy tale the reality.

Was it too much to expect the rest of the world to care about grammar or pay attention to details?

Books have given me a magic portal to connect with people of the past and the present. I know I shall never feel lonely or powerless again.

A hundred years ago, an average teenager knew countless authors, and, a sex position or two. Today, an average teenager knows countless sex positions, and, an author or two.

Whenever you read a good book, somewhere in the world a door opens to allow in more light.

Every child must be taught how to think, read and write.

We awaken by asking the right questions.

Every book is a children's book if the kid can read!

One glance at a book and you hear the voice of another person, perhaps someone dead for 1,000 years. To read is to voyage through time.

The reality of a serious writer is a reality of many voices, some of them belonging to the writer, some of them belonging to the world of readers at large.

The higher the proportion of adults with low literacy proficiency is, the slower the overall long-term GDP growth rate is.

Every old man that dies is a library that burns.

Shockingly, too many of our children don't read to grade level. Studies show that if a child does not read to grade level by third grade, that child is likely to drop out of school. I believe the love of reading begins at home. We should do all we can to make sure that our children and grandchildren stay in school and graduate. Reading to grade level is an important foundation.

We are not quite conscious of the reason for our disdain when we refer to the illiterate past as wallowing in ignorance... What divides us from them is the column of print. Theirs was a total culture involving all the senses, while ours is a culture concentrated in the literate eye.

About two-thirds of Americans believe that the Bible "answers all or most of the basic questions of life"—and 28 percent of them admit that they rarely or never read it!

All over the world there are enormous numbers of smart, even gifted, people who harbor a passion for science. But that passion is unrequited. Surveys suggest that some 95 percent of Americans are “scientifically illiterate.” That’s just the same fraction as those African Americans, almost all of them slaves, who were illiterate just before the Civil War—when severe penalties were in force for anyone who taught a slave to read. Of course there’s a degree of arbitrariness about any determination of illiteracy, whether it applies to language or to science. But anything like 95 percent illiteracy is extremely serious.

It's a sad state of affairs when we make fun of people for reading instead of making reading fun for people.

We need science education to produce scientists, but we need it equally to create literacy in the public. Man has a fundamental urge to comprehend the world about him, and science gives today the only world picture which we can consider as valid. It gives an understanding of the inside of the atom and of the whole universe, or the peculiar properties of the chemical substances and of the manner in which genes duplicate in biology. An educated layman can, of course, not contribute to science, but can enjoy and participate in many scientific discoveries which as constantly made. Such participation was quite common in the 19th century, but has unhappily declined. Literacy in science will enrich a person's life.

School made us 'literate' but did not teach us to read for pleasure.

When a reader enters the pages of a book of poetry, he or she enters a world where dreams transform the past into knowledge made applicable to the present, and where visions shape the present into extraordinary possibilities for the future.

If you read great literature every day, you will uplift your spirit, soul and self.

Any academic skill is quickly achievable if charged with clear purpose and an appeal to enthusiastic self-interest. Tarzan of the Apes only needed about twenty minutes to figure out how to read the beautiful Jane Porter’s cursive writing.

I feel free and strong. If I were not a reader of books I could not feel this way. Whatever may happen to me, thank God that I can read, that I have truly touched the minds of other men.

If we don’t live in the same vibe, it is hard to be aware of each other. When our reading differs from our neighbors’ reality, our surroundings may take a range of discordant shades and daily episodes become unrecognizable. But if we endeavor to find out, the “who is who”, the “what is what” and the “where is Waldo”, we might demonstrate our social literacy and connectedness. ("Fish for silence.")

Literacy is a right, not a privilege.

Parents often ask - how do I get my child interested in books and reading? One tried and true way that my late husband and I used was paying them to read. For each book that my sons read, we paid them $1. They soon developed a love for reading and forgot all about the money. Amazing but true!

People cited violation of the First Amendment when a New Jersey schoolteacher asserted that evolution and the Big Bang are not scientific and that Noah's ark carried dinosaurs. This case is not about the need to separate church and state; it's about the need to separate ignorant, scientifically illiterate people from the ranks of teachers.

This is the book, then , and the book of Shakespeare. And every day you must read a page of each to your child--even though you yourself do not understand what is written down and cannot sound the words properly. You must do this that the child will grow up knowing of what is great---knowing that these tenements of Williamsburg are not the whole world."Katie: " The Protestant Bible and Shakespeare.

A good many times I have been present at gatherings of people who, by the standards of the traditional culture, are thought highly educated and who have with considerable gusto been expressing their incredulity at the illiteracy of scientists. Once or twice I have been provoked and have asked the company how many of them could describe the Second Law of Thermodynamics. The response was cold: it was also negative. Yet I was asking something which is about the scientific equivalent of: Have you read a work of Shakespeare's?

Literacy is one of the greatest gifts a person could receive

No skill is more crucial to the future of a child than literacy.

Without books we should very likely be a still-primitive people living in the shadow of traditions that faded with years until only a blur remained, and different memories would remember the past in different ways. A parent or a teacher has only his lifetime; a good book can teach forever.Without books we should very likely be a still-primitive people living in the shadow of traditions that faded with years until only a blur remained, and different memories would remember the past in different ways. A parent or a teacher has only his lifetime; a good book can teach forever.

These programs and reading series are the fruit of an intellectually exhausted literacy industry that lost its way long ago, even as we mutely accepted its misguided agenda - to complicate reading and literacy so that we will purchase its programs and materials.

Libraries are, at heart, helpful and kind providers. It is hard for those who perhaps don't feel the need to visit their local libraries to understand what a vital service they provide for communities and individuals who do - and those who do are often the most vulnerable.

It’s our(As The Stars of the Sky Foundation, Inc.) passion and joy to read to children and improve literacy, as well as teach others about charity and the impact they can have in a child’s life.

To witness the awe of human beings delighting in their own hands forming the written word was humbling and he understood it profoundly at that moment watching those two, with the ancient land around them, in their traditional robes and the resting camels by their campfire, intently regarding writing with such immense respect … that illiteracy meant subsistence, while literacy meant human advancement, the base on which higher achievements and accomplishments of great civilizations could be built.

Defending the library service from the predations of ideologically-motivated public schoolboys who had immensely privileged childhoods isn’t ‘whining,’ it is the pursuit of passionately held beliefs.

We write to give strength to the soul of the spirit.

Literacy: Blessing? Or curse?

Wherever they went the Irish brought with them their books, many unseen in Europe for centuries and tied to their waists as signs of triumph, just as Irish heroes had once tied to their waists their enemies' heads. Where they went they brought their love of learning and their skills in bookmaking. In the bays and valleys of their exile, they reestablished literacy and breathed new life into the exhausted literary culture of Europe.And that is how the Irish saved civilization.

Everyone must be given the opportunity to think, read and write.

Scientific knowledge scarcely exists amongst the higher classes of society. The discussion in the Houses of Lords or of Commons, which arise on the occurrence of any subjects connected with science, sufficiently prove this fact…

If you would tell me the heart of a man, tell me not what he reads, but what he rereads.

Hey there, Hallie, welcome to the next place we need a Deer Crossing sign.' I didn't know that deers could

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

The music of revelation announces itself to the reader in somber brooding tones or in melodies light as air and one is invited to dance with the most captivating of partners: poetry.

...literacy is as vital as food, security, limiting population growth, and control of the environment.Education, after all, is the one issue that affects every other one. I think of it in the same way as dropping a pebble into a pond and getting a ripple effect. Educated people make more money and are more likely to escape poverty. Educated parents raise healthier children....The list goes on, just as ripples in a body of water emanate outward.

Fire . . . Does that light by itself?

Literacy is a bridge from misery to hope. It is a tool for daily life in modern society. It is a bulwark against poverty, and a building block of development, an essential complement to investments in roads, dams, clinics and factories. Literacy is a platform for democratization, and a vehicle for the promotion of cultural and national identity. Especially for girls and women, it is an agent of family health and nutrition. For everyone, everywhere, literacy is, along with education in general, a basic human right.... Literacy is, finally, the road to human progress and the means through which every man, woman and child can realize his or her full potential.

Everyone’s talking about the death and disappearance of the book as a format and an object. I don’t think that will happen. I think whatever happens, we have to figure out a way to protect our imaginations. Stories and poetry do that. You need a language in this world. People want words, they want to hear their situation in language, and find a way to talk about it. It allows you to find a language to talk about your own pain.If you give kids a language, they can use it. I think that’s what these educators fear. If you really educate these kids, they aren’t going to punch you in the face, they are going to challenge you with your own language.

Some say they get lost in books, but I find myself, again and again, in the pages of a good book. Humanly speaking, there is no greater teacher, no greater therapist, no greater healer of the soul, than a well-stocked library.