literacy quotes

Any book that helps a child to form a habit of reading, to make reading one of his deep and continuing needs, is good for him.

Where the press is free and every man able to read, all is safe.

Hold those things that tell your history and protect them. During slavery, who was able to read or write or keep anything? The ability to have somebody to tell your story to is so important. It says: ‚I was here. I may be sold tomorrow. But you know I was here.‘

Whatever the reasons may be, I was very much affected by events of the 1930s – the Spanish Civil War, for example, though I was barely literate.

The problem isn’t that Johnny can’t read. The problem isn’t even that Johnny can’t think. The problem is that Johnny doesn’t know what thinking is; he confuses it with feeling.

We’ve got to dumb America up again.

I’m sure most parents read to their children to explain what certain things mean. So books are a good way to convey a message to anybody. Everybody reads.

You don’t have to burn books to destroy a culture. Just get people to stop reading them.

Libraries raised me.

There are worse crimes than burning books. One of them is not reading them.

I think I’ve got my business notions and my sense for that sort of thing from my dad. My dad never had a chance to go to school. He couldn’t read and write. But he was so smart. He was just one of those people that could just make the most of anything and everything that he had to work with.

This will never be a civilized country until we spend more money for books than we do for chewing gum.

You teach a child to read, and he or her will be able to pass a literacy test.

Reading and writing, like everything else, improve with practice. And, of course, if there are no young readers and writers, there will shortly be no older ones. Literacy will be dead, and democracy – which many believe goes hand in hand with it – will be dead as well.

If you can’t read, the only thing you can do is enjoy the pictures, not the whole story. Reading is the key to knowledge. Knowledge is the key to understanding. So read on, young man! Read on, young lady!

For people who are readers, reading is important to them.

All the learnin‘ my father paid for was a bit o‘ birch at one end and an alphabet at the other.

I think you get most of the most interesting work done in fields where people don’t think they’re doing art but are merely practicing a craft and working as good craftsmen. Being literate as a writer is good craft, is knowing your job, is knowing how to use your tools properly and not to damage the tools as you use them.

You’re never too old, too wacky, too wild, to pick up a book and read to a child.

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

The man who does not read good books has no advantage over the man who cannot read them.

If you can’t read, it’s going to be hard to realize dreams.

If you know how to read, you have a complete education about life, then you know how to vote within a democracy. But if you don’t know how to read, you don’t know how to decide. That’s the great thing about our country – we’re a democracy of readers, and we should keep it that way.

Sometimes, reading a blog, which I do infrequently, I see that generations of Americans have been wilfully crippled, and can no longer spell or write a sentence.

As a country, we can’t teach kids how to read and write when we got 18 years to do it. And that’s – that’s a disgrace.

I read to my kid, but I can’t stand reading.