Literacy Quotes - Page 6

• When the Nobel award came my way, it also gave me an opportunity to do something immediate and practical about my old obsessions, including literacy, basic health care and gender equity, aimed specifically at India and Bangladesh.

  Amartya Sen

  Opportunity, Awards, India

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• Nothing about it interested me. Or about anything else, except making up stories. If literacy weren't so nearly universal, God knows what I'd be. A drain on the State, I shouldn't wonder.

  Donald E. Westlake

  Stories, Wonder, States

  Interview with Joe Hartlaub, www.bookreporter.com. April 21, 2000.

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• For your own safety, do not ever tell an astrophysicist, I hope all your stars are twinkling.

  Neil deGrasse Tyson

  Stars, Science, Safety

  Neil Degrasse Tyson (2010). “The Sky Is Not the Limit: Adventures of an Urban Astrophysicist”, p.154, Prometheus Books

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• Anybody who comes to the cinema is bringing they're whole sexual history, their literary history, their movie literacy, their culture, their language, their religion, whatever they've got. I can't possibly manipulate all of that, nor do I want to.

  David Cronenberg

  Culture, Cinema, Want

  "Controversial visionary David Cronenberg sees technology, mankind, sexuality merging in 'eXistenZ'". Interview with Rob Blackwelder, splicedwire.com. April 14, 1999.

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• My go-to gifts are scarves from my friend Matin Maulawizada's nonprofit organization, Afghan Hands, which supports disenfranchised women in Afghanistan. In exchange for their beautiful embroidery, the women are given financial aid and classes in math and literacy. The scarves are all stunning and one of a kind.

  Claire Danes

  Beautiful, Math, Hands

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• There is no Frigate like a book to take us lands away nor any coursers like a page of prancing Poetry.

  Emily Dickinson

  Book, Reading, Land

  "There is no frigate like a book" l. 1 (ca. 1873)

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• Let us read with method, and propose to ourselves an end to which our studies may point. The use of reading is to aid us in thinking.

  Edward Gibbon

  Book, Reading, Thinking

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• A man ought to read just as inclination leads him, for what he reads as a task will do him little good.

  Samuel Johnson

  Education, Reading, Men

  Quoted in James Boswell, The Life of Samuel Johnson (entry for 14 July 1763)

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• What we hope ever to do with ease, we must learn first to do with diligence.

  Samuel Johnson

  Success, Dance, Life And Love

  Samuel Johnson (1831). “The Lives of the English Poets: With Critical Observations on Their Works and Lives of Sundry Eminent Persons”, p.47

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• Never be entirely idle; but either be reading, or writing, or praying or meditating or endeavoring something for the public good.

  Thomas a Kempis

  Reading, Writing, Laziness

  St. Augustine, Dr. Howard Taylor, Mrs. Howard Taylor, Apostolic Fathers, J. Oswald Sanders (2010). “Moody Classics Complete Set: Includes 19 Classics of the Faith in a Single Volume”, p.1550, Moody Publishers

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• Doing research on the Web is like using a library assembled piecemeal by pack rats and vandalized nightly.

  Roger Ebert

  Reading, Library Research, Rats

  "Critical Eye". Yahoo! Internet Life, September 1998.

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• Part of me loves and respects men so desperately, and part of me thinks they are so embarrassingly incompetent at life and in love. You have to teach them the very basics of emotional literacy. You have to teach them how to be there for you, and part of me feels tender toward them and gentle, and part of me is so afraid of them, afraid of any more violation.

  Anne Lamott

  Love You, Men, Emotional

  Anne Lamott (1994). “Operating Instructions: A Journal of My Son's First Year”, Fawcett

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• Wherever there is a jackboot stomping on a human face there will be a well-heeled Western liberal to explain that the face does, after all, enjoy free health care and 100 percent literacy.

  John Derbyshire

  Doe, Care, Politics

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• No government has the right to decide on the truth of scientific principles, nor to prescribe in any way the character of the questions investigated. Neither may a government determine the aesthetic value of artistic creations, nor limit the forms of literacy or artistic expression. Nor should it pronounce on the validity of economic, historic, religious, or philosophical doctrines. Instead it has a duty to its citizens to maintain the freedom, to let those citizens contribute to the further adventure and the development of the human race.

  Richard P. Feynman

  Religious, Philosophical, Character

  "The Meaning of It All: Thoughts of a Citizen Scientist". Book by Richard Feynman, 1999.

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• I must judge for myself, but how can I judge, how can any man judge, unless his mind has been opened and enlarged by reading.

  John Adams

  Education, Wisdom, Reading

  John Adams, Charles Francis Adams (1850). “The Works of John Adams, Second President of the United States: With a Life of the Author, Notes and Illustrations”, p.131

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• I have always had a special affinity for libraries and librarians, for the most obvious reasons. I love books. (One of my first Jobs was shelving books at a branch of the Chicago Public Library.) Libraries are a pillar of any society. I believe our lack of attention to funding and caring for them properly in the United States has a direct bearing on problems of literacy, productivity, and our inability to compete in today's world. Libraries are everyman's free university.

  John Jakes

  Jobs, Believe, Book

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

  Malcolm X

  Book, Men, People

  Malcolm X (2015). “The Autobiography of Malcolm X”, p.398, Ballantine Books

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• A man is known by the books he reads.

  Ralph Waldo Emerson

  Book, Reading, Men

  Ralph Waldo Emerson, Joel Porte (1982). “Emerson in His Journals”, p.69, Harvard University Press

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• The fire of literacy is created by the emotional sparks between a child, a book, and the person reading. It isn’t achieved by the book alone, nor by the child alone, nor by the adult who’s reading aloud—it’s the relationship winding between all three, bringing them together in easy harmony.

  Mem Fox

  Inspirational, Children, Reading

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• Heaven, Kiwi thought, would be the reading room of a great library. But it would be private. Cozy. You wouldn't have to worry about some squeaky-shoed librarian turning the lights off on you or gauging your literacy by reading the names on your book spines, and there wouldn't be a single other patron. The whole place would hum with a library's peace, filtering softly over you like white bars of light.

  Karen Russell

  Book, Reading, Light

  FaceBook post by Karen Russell from Dec 02, 2012

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• To encourage literature and the arts is a duty which every good citizen owes to his country.

  George Washington

  Education, Country, Art

  Joseph Manca, George Washington (2012). “George Washington's Eye: Landscape, Architecture, and Design at Mount Vernon”, p.176, JHU Press

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• You're judging her by her literacy," Tara says. "You're a literacist." "You've made that up.

  Melina Marchetta

  Judging, Made

  Melina Marchetta (2007). “Saving Francesca”, p.100, Knopf Books for Young Readers

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• You're judging her by her literacy,' Tara says. 'You're a literacist.' 'You've made that up.' Thomas Mackee packs up his stuff and stands up. 'You chicks give me the shits,' he says. 'You, on the other hand, brighten up our day,' I tell him. 'We all regard you as a god.

  Melina Marchetta

  Hands, Giving, Judging

  Melina Marchetta (2007). “Saving Francesca”, p.100, Knopf Books for Young Readers

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• I would teach how science works as much as I would teach what science knows. I would assert (given that essentially, everyone will learn to read) that science literacy is the most important kind of literacy they can take into the 21st century. I would undervalue grades based on knowing things and find ways to reward curiosity. In the end, it's the people who are curious who change the world.

  Neil deGrasse Tyson

  Knowing, People, Curiosity

  Interviews from Reddit's "ask me anything" forums, www.reddit.com. December 17, 2011.

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• Experts in literacy and child development have discovered that if children know eight nursery rhymes by heart by the time they’re four years old, they’re usually among the best readers by the time they’re eight.

  Mem Fox

  Children, Heart, Eight

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