Cultural Literacy Quotes & Sayings

Public libraries have succumbed to the same pressures that have overwhelmed the basic cultural functions of museums and universities, aims that should remain what they were, not because the old ways are always better but because in this case they were the right ones: the sustaining of standards, the preservation of quality, the conservation of literacy's history, the education of the heart, eye and mind. Now libraries devote far too much of their restricted space, and their limited budget, to public amusement. It is a fact of philistine life that amusement is where the money is. — William H Gass

I think the world is full of evil people. I think in some ways we're in more danger now than before. — Dean Koontz

1987: "We cannot assume that young people today know things that were known in the past by almost every literate person in the culture." Hirsch has argued that students are being sent out into the world without the basic level of cultural literacy that is necessary to be a good citizen (what does it say that two thirds of American seventeen-year-olds can't even tell you within fifty years when the Civil War occurred?), and what's needed is a kind of educational counterreformation that reemphasizes hard facts. — Joshua Foer

We have ignored cultural literacy in thinking about education We ignore the air we breathe until it is thin or foul. Cultural literacy is the oxygen of social intercourse. — E.D. Hirsch Jr.

When there are a hundred dragons in the sky, it is Hell Down and Hallow Fire. It is the winds of a hurricane and the roar of the storm. We blot out the sun, we blacken the clouds, we churn the sea like foam. It is a magnificent, terrifying sight. — H. Leighton Dickson

When I kiss a girl for a part, people think it's sexy. But if two guys kiss, suddenly there's a backlash. It's a double standard. — Olivia Wilde

The notion of multiple literacies recognized that there are many ways of being-and of becoming-literate, and that how literacy develops and how it is used depend on the particular social and cultural setting. — Jerome Bruner

God ordains opposition so that he may prove to the opponents, who are many in number, to the few that God chooses to bless, that if God's hand is with that few, the many cannot oppose and be successful. — Louis Farrakhan

In a polite age almost every person becomes a reader, and receives more instruction from the Press than the Pulpit. — Oliver Goldsmith

Film has become a marketed commodity, and the opportunities and audiences for art cinema have grown smaller. There is a general downturn in cultural literacy, perhaps because of television. — Roger Ebert

To be scientifically illiterate is to remain essentially uncultured. And the chief virtue of a cultural activity
be it art, music, literature, or science
is the way it enriches our lives. — Lawrence M. Krauss

Bookishness, highest literacy, every technique of cultural propaganda and training not only can accompany bestiality and oppression and despotism but at certain points foster it. — George Steiner

We can give up belief in God while not losing touch with a treasured heritage. — Richard Dawkins

I believe that the people are looking for a leader who has experience, who has courage, who has vision. — Matthew Coon Come

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 calm and attentive thought. In arguing that books are archaic and dispensable, Federman and Shirky provide the intellectual cover that allows thoughtful people to slip comfortably in the permanent state of distractedness that defines the online life. — Nicholas Carr

It is one thing to try to understand how genes influence human identity or sexuality or temperament. It is quite another thing to imagine altering identity or sexuality or behavior by altering genes. — Siddhartha Mukherjee

At the major studios, you see people wanting to remake a TV series, wanting to make a sequel. — Clint Eastwood

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. — Kofi Annan

Without the United States, there simply would not have been an armed uprising in our country. — Daniel Ortega

they have priorities beyond merely being safe and living longer; that the chance to shape one's story is essential to sustaining meaning in life; that we have the opportunity to refashion our institutions, our culture, and our conversations in ways that transform the possibilities for the last chapters of everyone's lives. Inevitably, — Atul Gawande

What this committee needs, what this media center needs, is a good dose of Jeeves."
"I'm sorry," said Mr. Peabody, a mathematics lecturer who sat hunched at the far end of the table taking the minutes. "How do you spell that?"
"Is it possible," said Arthur, raising both his shoulders and his voice, "that we are working in a university where lecturers are not aware of the identity of one Reginald Jeeves, the gentleman's personal gentleman and the personal gentleman's gentleman? What has happened to cultural literacy, my fellow members of the Advisory Committee for the Media Center? This sort of ignorance is exactly what needs addressing. What I mean, Mr. Peabody, when I say that we need a dose of Jeeves, is that we need quiet and reasoned wisdom that leads to prompt and directed action. — Charlie Lovett

To speak without shame about books we haven't read, we would thus do well to free ourselves of the oppressive image of cultural literacy without gaps, as transmitted and imposed by family and school, for we can strive toward this image for a lifetime without ever managing to coincide with it. — Pierre Bayard

An album for me as a teenager in the '70s was a fully formed concept. It was a body of work from an artist I liked or trusted or who excited me. Maybe one of the songs is really poppy and you listen to it on the radio as a hit single and then more of the world is about to find out about this artist by buying the record. — Christopher Bollen

Education brings sustainability to all the development goals, and literacy is the foundation of all learning. It provides individuals with the skills to understand the world and shape it, to participate in democratic processes and have a voice, and also to strengthen their cultural identity. — Irina Bokova

James Dobson, founder of today's infamous 'Focus on the Family' movement,* is equally acquainted with the principle: 'Those who control what young people are taught, and what they experience - what they see, hear, think, and believe - will determine the future course for the nation.'79 ========== — Anonymous