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…

The world of books, the greatest possessions.

Reading is important, because if you can read, you can learn anything about everything and everything about anything.

For my present purpose I require a word which shall embrace both the Sub-Creative Art in itself, and a quality of strangeness and wonder in the Expression, derived from the Image: a quality essential to...

Hey there, Hallie, welcome to the next place we need a Deer Crossing sign.’ I didn’t know that deers could read.’They can in Cosgrove County. It’s part of the No Deer Left Behind program.

Good literacy skills can help children:-Be healthy and safe.-Do their homework to their best ability.-Get and keep a job one day.-Eventually participate in local committees or government

We have created a culture of reading poverty in which a vicious cycle of aliteracy has the potential to devolve into illiteracy for many students. By allowing students to pass through our classrooms without learning...

When writing the constitution for the Commonwealth of Massachusetts, John Adams wrote:I must judge for myself, but how can I judge, how can any man judge, unless his mind has been opened and enlarged by...

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.

People don’t realize how a man’s whole life can be changed by one book.

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

If you think of religion as something that offers a picture of something more grand than us, reading does the same thing. Reading enables us to lift ourselves from our current situation to something higher...

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

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.

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

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.

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...

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...

…And another item from the growing file of people who voluntarily wear dunce caps… You’ll be talking cordially to someone and make an offhand reference, ‘I recently read where–‘ and they’ll cut you off and...

Frederick Douglass taught that literacy is the path from slavery to freedom. There are many kinds of slavery and many kinds of freedom, but reading is still the path.

Literacy is one of the greatest gifts a person could receive

With words at your disposal, you can see more clearly. Finding the words is another step in learning to see.

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...

Read. Everything you can get your hands on. Read until words become your friends. Them when you need to find one, they will jump into your mind, waving their hands for you to pick them....

When you learn to read you will be born again…and you will never be quite so alone again.

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.

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...

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...

Books are great meals for the mind!

I have become very aware how under-represented are the stories of the underprivileged and undervalued. Our records are, in general, very male and if not always the material of the rich, certainly (for obvious reasons)...

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.

To be unable to read was the ultimate measure of wretchedness.

Why does everyone have to pretend to be stupid and not know long words?

Every old man that dies is a library that burns.

Before Gutenberg, libraries were small — the Cambridge University library had only 122 volumes in 1424, for instance; after Gutenberg literacy became widespread.

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...

I want to be a creature that’s half bee, half the letter B. That way I can pollinate the world with my literacy.

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

No one reads; if someone does read, he doesn’t understand; if he understands, he immediately forgets.

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

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

Their words also make it a lot easier for people to justify that shift — to convince themselves that surfing the Web is a suitable, even superior, substitute for deep reading and other forms of...