Literacy Quotes

“Whenever you read a good book, somewhere in the world a door opens to allow in more light.”
― Vera Nazarian

“You may have tangible wealth untold; caskets of jewels and coffers of gold. Richer than I you can never be. I had a mother who read to me.”
― Strickland Gillian

“Why does everyone have to pretend to be stupid and not know long words?”
― Martin Freeman

“There's nothing like a shovel full of dirt to encourage literacy.”
― Margaret Atwood, The Blind Assassin

“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. And you can select whichever you like, just like a captain choosing a stickball team.”
― Karen Witemeyer

“When you learn to read you will be born again...and you will never be quite so alone again.”
― Rumer Godden

“We are looking at a society increasingly dependent on machines, yet decreasingly capable of making or even using them effectively.”
― Douglas Rushkoff, Program or Be Programmed: Ten Commands for a Digital Age

“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.”
― Thomas Cahill

“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 reading.”
― John Adams

“[T]o really try to be informed and literate today is to feel stupid nearly all the time, and to need help.”
― David Foster Wallace, The Best American Essays 2007

“They are a testament not only to the Afghans' hunger for literacy, but also to their willingness to pour scarce resources into this effort, even during a time of war. I have seen children studying in classrooms set up inside animal sheds, windowless basements, garages, and even an abandoned public toilet. We ourselves have run schools out of refugee tents, shipping containers, and the shells of bombed-out Soviet armored personnel carriers. The thirst for education over there is limitless. The Afghans want their children to go to school because literacy represents what neither we not anyone else has so far managed to offer them: hope, progress, and the possibility of controlling their own destiny.”
― Greg Mortenson, Stones Into Schools: Promoting Peace With Books, Not Bombs, in Afghanistan and Pakistan

“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.”
― Aberjhani, Collected Visions of a Skylark Dressed in Black

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

“Each letter of the alphabet is a steadfast loyal soldier in a great army of words, sentences, paragraphs, and stories. One letter falls, and the entire language falters.”
― Vera Nazarian, The Perpetual Calendar of Inspiration

“Literacy isn't just about reading, writing, and comprehension. It's about culture, professionalism, and social outlook.”
― Taylor Ellwood, Pop Culture Magick

“...we're also extremely sensitive to the difference between literacy and ideology. It is our belief that the first helps to thwart intolerance, challenge dogma, and reinforce our common humanity. The second does the opposite.”
― Greg Mortenson, Stones Into Schools: Promoting Peace With Books, Not Bombs, in Afghanistan and Pakistan

“I think scientists have a valid point when they bemoan the fact that it's socially acceptable in our culture to be utterly ignorant of math, whereas it is a shameful thing to be illiterate.”
― Jennifer Ouellette, The Calculus Diaries: How Math Can Help You Lose Weight, Win in Vegas, and Survive a Zombie Apocalypse

“Just a thought.
What sets us above all other life on this planet is our ability to read. What we read can determine our relationship with all other life on this planet.”
― M.J. Croan

“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.”
― Aberjhani, Journey through the Power of the Rainbow: Quotations from a Life Made Out of Poetry

“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.”
― Aberjhani

“If you grow up in a household where there are books, where you are read to, where parents, siblings, aunts, uncles, and cousins read for their own pleasure, naturally you learn to read. If no one close to you takes joy in reading, where is the evidence that it's worth the effort?”
― Carl Sagan, The Demon-Haunted World: Science as a Candle in the Dark

“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.”
― Nick Joaquín, Culture and History

“There is no such thing as a leap into literacy.”
― David Petersen, Absolute Beginner's Guide to Hiragana

“If for us culture means museum and library and open house and art gallery, for them it meant the activities and amenities of everyday life... The rift is... between "folk" culture, where the unschooled can be wise, and print culture, which enslaved the other senses to the eye.”
― Nick Joaquín, Culture and History

“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.”
― Laura Pedersen, Best Bet

“Never again will I sign a blank sheet of paper with my thumbprint.”
― Mukhtar Mai, In the Name of Honour - A Memoir

“But King James I hated learned ladies. they were ridiculed at court, and soon the normal Stuart education for girls went little beyond the most basic skills of reading and writing, and the elementary arithmetic they would need in their household management.”
― Katie Whitaker, Mad Madge: The Extraordinary Life of Margaret Cavendish, Duchess of Newcastle, the First Woman to Live by Her Pen

“I am saying then, that literacy—the mastery of language and the knowledge of books—is not an ornament, but a necessity. It is impractical only by the standards of quick profit and easy power. Longer perspective will show that it alone can preserve in us the possibility of an accurate judgement of ourselves and the possibilities of correction and renewal. Without it, we are adrift in the present, in the wreckage of yesterday, in the nightmare of tomorrow.”
― Wendell Berry, A Continuous Harmony: Essays Cultural and Agricultural

“Bridging two cultures (Nigerian and American) and three professions and careers (Architecture, Business and Education) to literacy’s true freedom.”
― Winnie Nnakwe, Never Alone! Inspiring Through Literacy and Education: From Grace to Grace

“For us, the Western literacy tradition is an ill-fitting shoe. We simply cannot be forced to wear a shoe that will pinch our toes.”
― Michelle Good, Truth Telling: Seven Conversations about Indigenous Life in Canada