Quotes & Sayings About Illiteracy

The hall-mark of American humour is its pose of illiteracy. — Ronald Knox

She said that I must always be intolerant of ignorance but understanding of illiteracy. That some people, unable to go to school, were more educated and even more intelligent than college professors. — Maya Angelou

With the help of prominent media outlets, the Royalists, now a political minority, would engage in a scorched-earth strategy to defeat a coming Progressive Revolution, even if it meant crashing the United States as we know it. If they were going down, then the rest of the nation was going down with them.

Which is exactly what happened. — Thom Hartmann

The man who reads nothing at all is better educated than the man who reads nothing but newspapers. — Thomas Jefferson

Ignorance defends itself savagely, and illiteracy, as I well knew, can be shrewd. — Ursula K. Le Guin

Why would you apologize for what you read for pleasure? Just think of the illiteracy rate. Every book read for pleasure should be celebrated. And novels that celebrate love, commitment, relationships, making relationships work, why isn't that something to be respected? — Nora Roberts

I don't think I'd have wanted to be around during a dark age. It's odd, though. They had interstellar flight. And data retrieval and everything." Gabe nodded. "None of it matters if you have an unstable society and tin-pot dictators. They had several hundred years of economic collapse. Widespread poverty. A few people at the top had all the money and influence. They had terrible overpopulation, struggles over water and resources. Civil wars. And widespread illiteracy." The thirty-second to the thirty-ninth century. "It's a wonder we survived. — Jack McDevitt

When people are kept in abject poverty and illiteracy while others grow rich and "develop their personalities" at the former's expense we speak of oppression; when structures and persons that perpetuate powerlessness are replaced by structures that allow people to stand on their own feet and have their own voice, we speak of liberation.2 Both — Miroslav Volf

The elimination of ignorance, of illiteracy ... and of needless inequalities in opportunities (is) to be seen as objectives that are valued for their own sake. They expand our freedom to lead the lives we have reason to value, and these elementary capabilities are of importance on their own — Amartya Sen

To pine for the days before public education became a practical reality is to pine for an America held back by mass ignorance and mass illiteracy. — Timothy Noah

The cultural forces that help politically sustain both the militaristic and the corporate function of the Deep State, however, are growing more irrational and antiscience. A military tradition that glories in force and appeals to self-sacrifice is the polar opposite of the Enlightenment heritate of rationality, the search for peace, and a belief in the common destiny of mankind. The warrior-leader, like the witch doctor, ultimately appeals to irrational emotionalism; and the cultural psychology that produces the bravest and most loyal warriors is a mind-set that is usually hostile to the sort of free inquiry of which scientific progress depends. This dynamic is observable in Afghanistan: no outside power has been able to conquer and pacify that society for millennia because of the tenacity of its warrior spirit; yet the country has one of the highest illiteracy rates on earth and is barely out of the Bronze Age in social development. p 260 — Mike Lofgren

Hatred, intolerance, poor hygienic conditions and violence all have roots in illiteracy, so we're trying to do something to help the poor and the needy. — Abdul Qadeer Khan

If literacy was natural, the word 'illiteracy' would not exist. — T.K. Naliaka

The ratio of literacy to illiteracy is constant, but nowadays the illiterates can read and write. — Alberto Moravia

Out of abysses of Illiteracy, Through labyrinths of Lies, Across wastelands of Disease ... We advance Out of dead-ends of Poverty, Through wilderness of Superstition, Across barricades of Jim Crowism ... We advance. — Melvin B. Tolson

The new illiteracy is about more than not knowing how to read the book or the word; it is about not knowing how to read the world ... — Henry Giroux

As a child I experienced firsthand the severe effects of poverty and illiteracy, especially upon women and children. My parents taught me the importance of education and that it was a key to improving an individual's life. — Naveen Jain

Freedom is meaningless if people cannot put food in their stomachs, if they can have no shelter, if illiteracy and disease continue to dog them. — Nelson Mandela

You should have bought the bracelet, you know," he told me, in a contemplative tone. "The stones would match your eyes." Pride kept me from saying that the trinket had been too expensive for my purse. I took a small step backwards and he let his hand fall, his expression unconcerned. "I bought this, instead." I held up my book to show him. "You can read, then." "My father was a scrivener. He viewed illiteracy as an unpardonable sin." "You were fortunate. I cannot imagine you would find much to read in your uncle's house." I smiled, in spite of myself. "Very little." "Then you must come visit me at the Hall. I have a good library. You would be welcome to borrow anything you wanted. — Susanna Kearsley

This book (Jarod Kintz's book) is trash. I mean, I assume it is, because that's where I found it while scrounging for lunch. However, I must admit that I haven't read it. I would have, but I am homeless, mainly due to my illiteracy (though Big Government, Keynesian monetary policy, and my struggle with alcoholism certainly played a large role). — Dora J. Arod

There is a triangular relationship between poverty, child labour and illiteracy who have a cause and consequence relationship. We will have to break this vicious circle. — Kailash Satyarthi

Intellectual cowardice is only one of the problems of the academic community. Fort rubbed their
noses in the swill generated by their gibberish and illiteracy. It was no secret then or now that
academic publications are designed to protect the inept and to conceal ignorance. People with
nothing to say, who even lack the ability to say nothing, can hide behind the academic method for a
lifetime. — John A. Keel

Illiteracy does not impede the practice of democracy, as witnessed by the success of democracy in India despite the high illiteracy rate. One doesn't need a university diploma to realize that the ruler is oppressive and corrupt. On the other hand, to eradicate illiteracy requires that we elect a fair and efficient political regime. — Alaa Al Aswany

No less characteristic in a democracy is social justice. This demands a solution to the frightening indexes of infant mortality, of malnutrition, lack of education illiteracy, wages not sufficient to sustain life — Rigoberta Menchu

Illiteracy and stupidity are not quite different statuses; they are both the outcome of our lethargy and indolence. — M.F. Moonzajer

There's much talk about how there can't be democracy in a region that has problems of illiteracy and poverty. But I bring a different idea to the table when I say, 'Guys, I come from India. I'm more optimistic coming from where I'm coming.' — Bobby Ghosh

It is environmental illiteracy and a complete lack of forward thinking to ignore the need to halt and then reverse population growth in the context of climate change, travel congestion, unaffordable housing, and resource depletion — Phil Harding

Modern war, modern international hostility is, I believe, possible only through the stupid illiteracy of the mass of men and the conceit and intellectual indolence of rulers and those who feed the public mind. — H.G.Wells

We [Black people] have always used our creativity to battle and we're not the only ones. Black Americans are certainly leaders in that simply because we were denied education and dealt with enforced illiteracy. But people seem to always forget that literacy is not the only way of learning things or conveying knowledge. — Nikki Giovanni

Just carrying a ruler with you in your pocket should be forbidden, at least on a moral basis. The ruler is the symbol of the new illiteracy. The ruler is the symptom of the new disease, disintegration of our civilisation. — Friedensreich Hundertwasser

Being will-read is not sufficient, and it isn't the highest virtue to which we can strive, but it is both necessary and practical. We are, after all, people of the Great Book; no Christian leader ought to choose the illiteracy or intentionally fail to develop the intellectual skills needed to read well. — John Mark Reynolds

The idea of popular art, like that of a patriotic art, if not actually dangerous seemed to me ridiculous. If the intention was to make art accessible to the people by sacrificing refinements of form, on the ground that they are "all right for the idle rich" but not for anybody else, I had seen enough of fashionable society to know that it is there that one finds real illiteracy and not, let us say, among electricians. — Marcel Proust

Beware the man of a single book. — Thomas Aquinas

This will never be a civilized country until we expend more money for books than we do for chewing gum. — Elbert Hubbard

I have a vision of India: an India free of hunger and fear, an India free of illiteracy and want. — Atal Bihari Vajpayee

Our real illiteracy is our inability to create — Friedensreich Hundertwasser

But Christian illiteracy is only the first part of the crisis. Even more seriously, even for those who think they speak "Christian" fluently, the faith itself is often misunderstood and distorted by many to whom it is seemingly very familiar. They think they are speaking the language as it has always been understood, but what they mean by the words and concepts is so different from what these things have meant historically, that they would have trouble communicating with the very authors of the past they honor. — Marcus J. Borg

If the Negro was to learn, he must teach himself, and the most effective help that could be given him was the establishment of schools to train Negro teachers. This conclusion was slowly but surely reached by every student of the situation until simultaneously, in widely separated regions, without consultation or systematic plan, there arose a series of institutions designed to furnish teachers for the untaught. Above the sneers of critics at the obvious defects of this procedure must ever stand its one crushing rejoinder: in a single generation they put thirty thousand black teachers in the South; they wiped out the illiteracy of the majority of the black people of the land, and they made Tuskegee possible. — W.E.B. Du Bois

Elimination of illiteracy is as serious an issue to our history as the abolition of slavery. — Maya Angelou

Baltimore's slogan was 'The City that Reads', but like the rest of its one million or so inhabitants Lori knew that was a pipedream; the city had one of the lowest literacy rates in the country, and along with illiteracy went a lack of morals. — Stephen Leather

Building a godly life on the sand of scriptural illiteracy is impossible. — Edwin Louis Cole

In a government institution, there is only one area in which problems are taken seriously, and that is the political. Many of the strange things done in American educationism suddenly become perfectly understandable when we see them not as educational methods but as political maneuvers. We must understand illiteracy, therefore, the root of ignorance and thoughtlessness, as not some inadvertent failure to accomplish what was intended but simply a political arrangement of great value to somebody. — Richard Mitchell

Let's face it. There are good people and bad people everywhere. Illiteracy, poor education, wars, greed , corruption and similar factors were responsible for the problems in both India and Pakistan. Religious fanatics benefited from these factors and developed formidable socio-political strongholds in both countries. — Vivek Pereira

It is science alone that can solve the problems of hunger and poverty, of insanitation and illiteracy, of superstition and deadening custom and tradition, of vast resources running to waste, or a rich country inhabited by starving people ... Who indeed could afford to ignore science today? At every turn we have to seek its aid ... The future belongs to science and those who make friends with science. — Jawaharlal Nehru

We live in a world in which we are able to communicate very quickly in many different ways, and yet we find communicating more difficult than ever. When in fact we need communication more urgently than ever, because the enemies that threaten us are universal: drugs, illiteracy and crime. We have to fight against them together. — Tom Cruise

Some people argue that teaching children financial basics is the parents' job. However, this well-meant sentiment is what we're relying on now, and for all too many, it isn't working. In some families, financial illiteracy is passed on from generation to generation. Education takes place in the home, on the streets, and in the schools. Therefore, schools must bear some responsibility for teaching this skill. However, if you're raising children, remember that no one cares as much as you do or has as much ability to teach the important life skill of personal money management. — Eric Tyson

Yes and I appreciate it. But this is going to be difficult enough without running my words through a filter of illiteracy. — Kevin Hearne

More than the divides of race, class, or gender, more than rural or urban, believer or nonbeliever, red state or blue state, our culture has been carved up into radically distinct, unbridgeable, and antagonistic entities that no longer speak the same language and cannot communicate. This is the divide between a literate, marginalized minority and those who have been consumed by an illiterate mass culture. — Chris Hedges

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 to love reading, we are creating adults (who then become parents and teachers) who don't read much. They may be capable of reading well enough to perform academic and informational reading, but they do not love to read and have few life reading habits to model for children. — Donalyn Miller

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 say, 'Oh, I don't read' ... This is a tragedy on so many different levels. First, because they don't read, they don't know enough to keep it to themselves. Next, and this is the most amazing part, they use a demeaning tone like I'm the stupid one for wasting time with books. — Tim Dorsey

As part of the National Strategy, the Government should commit itself to the virtual elimination of functional illiteracy and innumeracy. — May-Britt Moser

A dog's best friend is his illiteracy. — Ogden Nash

Kids not only need to read a lot but they need lots of books they can read right at their fingertips.They also need access to books that entice them, attract them to reading. Schools ... can make it easy and unrisky for children to take books home for the evening or weekend by worrying less about losing books to children and more about losing children to illiteracy. — Richard Allington

If every parent understood the huge educational benefits and intense happiness brought about by reading aloud to their children, and if every parent- and every adult caring for a child-read aloud a minimum of three stories a day to the children in our lives, we could probably wipe out illiteracy within one generation. — Mem Fox

To put an arrogant 'famous' writer in his place: pretend to be illiterate. — Mokokoma Mokhonoana

You can blame people and situations for your misery, hunger, deprivation and illness, but you are the only person can be blamed for your illiteracy. — M.F. Moonzajer

Scientific illiteracy in our populations is leaving too many of us unprepared to discuss or understand much of the damage we are wreaking on our atmosphere, our habitat, and even the food that enters our mouths. — Barbara Kingsolver

By 1940 the literacy figure for all states stood at 96 percent for whites. Eighty percent for blacks. Notice for all the disadvantages blacks labored under, four of five were still literate. Six decades later, at the end of the 20th century, the National Adult Literacy Survey and the National Assessment of Educational Progress say 40 percent of blacks and 17 percent of whites can't read at all. Put another way, black illiteracy doubled, white illiteracy quadrupled, despite the fact that we spend three or four times as much real money on schooling as we did 60 years ago. — Vin Suprynowicz

From the moment when the machine first made its appearance it was clear to all thinking people that the need for human drudgery, and therefore to a great extent for human inequality, had disappeared. If the machine were used deliberately for that end, hunger, overwork, dirt, illiteracy, and disease could be eliminated within a few generations. And — George Orwell

To those who care about punctuation, a sentence such as "Thank God its Friday" (without the apostrophe) rouses feelings not only of despair but of violence. The confusion of the possessive "its" (no apostrophe) with the contractive "it's" (with apostrophe) is an unequivocal signal of illiteracy and sets off a Pavlovian "kill" response in the average stickler. — Lynne Truss

I have condemned my kids to a lifetime of geographic illiteracy. — Ken Jennings

Promoting education is an effort that is close to my heart. Illiteracy contributes to poverty; encouraging children to pick up a book is fundamental. — Sasha Grey

Illiteracy was the usual condition in sixteenth-century England, to be sure. According to one estimate at least 70 percent of men and 90 percent of women of the period couldn't even sign their names. But as one moved up the social scale, literacy rates rose appreciably. — Bill Bryson

I'm beginning to believe that Killer Illiteracy ought to rank near heart disease and cancer as one of the leading causes of deathamong Americans. What you don't know can indeed hurt you, and so those who can neither read nor write lead miserable lives, like Richard Wright's character, Bigger Thomas, born dead with no past or future. — Ishmael Reed

To narrate is to give oneself: it seems obvious that literature, as an effort to communicate fully, will continue to be blocked so long as misery and illiteracy exist, and so long as the possessors of power continue to carry on with impunity their policy of collective imbecilization through the mass media. — Eduardo Galeano

My father was a civil servant in northern India where I was born. As a boy I saw the dire effects of poverty and illiteracy, especially on women and children. It often seemed that the only thing separating me from them was luck. — Naveen Jain

Monolingualism is the illiteracy of the 21st century! — Greg Roberts

Taking money from job creating entrepreneurs and giving it to ever-failing government programs has to be the ultimate in economic illiteracy. — James Cook

Illiteracy is rampant. People are out of communication. — Karen Black

A political system seeking to function amongst ignorant, illiterate and barbaric people could have marvelous principles but could only succeed in being ignorant, illiterate and barbaric unless one addressed the people one by one and cured the ignorance, illiteracy and barbarism of each citizen. — L. Ron Hubbard

Not a thousand years ago, it was illegal to teach a slave to read. Not a thousand years ago, the Supreme Court decided that separate could not be equal. And today, as we sit here, no one is learning anything in this country. You see a nation which is the leader of the rest of the world, that had to pay the price of that ticket, and the price of that ticket is we're sitting in the most illiterate nation in the world. THE MOST ILLITERATE NATION IN THE WORLD. A monument to illiteracy. And if you doubt me, all you have to do is spend a day in Washington. I am serious as a heart attack. — James Baldwin

Illiteracy at the poverty level (mainly a matter of bad grammar) does not alarm me nearly as much as the illiteracy of the well-to-do. — Mary McCarthy

I blinked at her, suddenly loathing her to the depths of my soul. Not only was she probably rather evil, and definitely thoroughly unpleasant, but she also didn't read. — Nicole Peeler

I hope someday we can stamp out illiteracy in America. Of course you'll have to kill alot of my relatives to do it. — Jeff Foxworthy

Sri Yukteswar showed no special consideration to those who happened to be powerful or accomplished; neither did he slight others for their poverty or illiteracy. He would listen respectfully to words of truth from a child, and openly ignore a conceited pundit. — Paramahansa Yogananda

The creation of conditions by which an entire people who have lived in exploitation and illiteracy gains access to the highest levels of knowledge and creativity is one of the most beautiful achievements of a revolution. — Roberto Fernandez Retamar

The state of our educational system is a disgrace to our country. We have an elementary and secondary school system in which close to half of the youngsters never graduate properly. It's a disgrace that there is more illiteracy today than there was 100 years ago. — Milton Friedman

Those who depend on television as their primary information source are condemned to ... A form of political illiteracy. — Bill Kraus

The illiteracy level of our children are appalling. — George W. Bush

As massive numbers of homeless, hungry, unemployed, drug-addicted, illiterate, and mentally ill people vanish behind its walls, the social problems of extreme poverty, homelessness, hunger, unemployment, drug addiction, illiteracy, and mental illness become more ignorable, too. — Maya Schenwar

The need for general scientific understanding by the public has never been larger, and the penalty for scientific illiteracy never harsher ... Lack of scientific fundamentals causes people to make foolish decisions about issues such as the toxicity of chemicals, the efficacy of medicines, the changes in the global climate. — Peter Agre

First, however, I must deal with the matter of Jesus, the so-called savior, who not long ago taught new doctrines and was thought to be a son of God. This savior, I shall attempt to show, deceived many and caused them to accept a form of belief harmful to the well-being of mankind. Taking its root in the lower classes, the religion continues to spread among the vulgar: nay, one can even say it spreads because of its vulgarity and the illiteracy of its adherents. And while there are a few moderate, reasonable, and intelligent people who interpret its beliefs allegorically, yet it thrives in its purer form among the ignorant. — Celsus

I think it's a scandal what has been happening in the school system so far as lower income classes. The dropout rates, the illiteracy rate, you know literacy in the United States was a lot higher in 1890 than it is now. — Milton Friedman

Since the dawn of the twentieth century, we have been told that
the federal government has the answers to solve all of society's problems.
We have been promised, by supposedly serious men who have
sworn an oath before God and man, that if we just give Washington,
D.C., more of our money and more of our personal freedom, the
problems of poverty, illiteracy, racism, unemployment, crime, and
corruption will all be solved. Today, each and every one of these
problems is worse than it has ever been. The federal government and
its blood-sucking bureaucracies do not have a solution to the problem,
they are the problem. — Ziad K. Abdelnour

In these days of widespread illiteracy, functional illiteracy ... anything that keeps people stupid is a felony. — Harlan Ellison

Ah, he thought, for one who cannot read--or think--the Image, the physical form of Love! — Willa Cather

All over the world there are enormous numbers of smart, even gifted, people who harbor a passion for science. But that passion is unrequited. Surveys suggest that some 95 percent of Americans are "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 to read. Of course there's a degree of arbitrariness about any determination of illiteracy, whether it applies to language or to science. But anything like 95 percent illiteracy is extremely serious. — Carl Sagan

LOL could go and take a running jump. I wasn't made for illiteracy; it simply didn't come naturally. — Gail Honeyman

Illiteracy is dependence. By finding the courage to learn to read and write, Hanna had advanced from dependence to independence, a step towards liberation. — Bernhard Schlink

I know that, throughout the world, there are good men and women concerned with the greatest challenges facing society today - poverty, illiteracy, and disease. — Nelson Mandela

In ancient times there was no public education, except that of the forum, the theater, and the street, and the general degree of illiteracy was very high ... the early men of science were left very much to themselves and such a phrase as "the scientific culture of Alexandria in the third century B.C." does not cover any reality. In a sense, this is still true today; the real pioneers are so far ahead of the crowd (even a very literate crowd) that they remain almost alone ... — George Sarton

The gears of poverty, ignorance, hopelessness and low self-esteem interact to create a kind of perpetual failure machine that grinds down dreams from generation to generation. We all bear the cost of keeping it running. Illiteracy is its linchpin. — Carl Sagan

If education causes better economic understanding, there is an argument for education subsidies - albeit not necessarily higher subsidies than we have now.62 If the connection is not causal, however, throwing money at education treats a symptom of economic illiteracy, not the disease. You would get more bang for your buck by defunding efforts to "get out the vote."63 One intriguing piece of evidence against the causal theory is that educational attainment rose substantially in the postwar era, but political knowledge stayed about the same.64 — Bryan Caplan

Better to lose a book to a child, than to lose a child to illiteracy. — Richard Allington

Children deprived of words become school dropouts; dropouts deprived of hope behave delinquently. Amateur censors blame delinquency on reading immoral books and magazines, when in fact, the inability to read anything is the basic trouble. — Peter S. Jennison

Grigsby's marvelous exploration-a deep, wide, and beautiful inquiry into Sojourner Truth's use of technology-features more of her photographs than have ever been collected before. Among its many insights, I especially relished the analysis of Truth's illiteracy. Enduring Truths is art history with a wide-ranging concept of history left in. A terrific book, and one we've needed for a long time. — Nell Irvin Painter

In our time, the curse is monetary illiteracy, just as inability to read plain print was the curse of earlier centuries. — Ezra Pound

It is my desire to break the destructive generational cycle of illiteracy in the home by focusing on the children. Reading to your child has so much value as a parent because it opens the lines of communication. — Victoria Osteen

Considering the comparative lifespans of simpler tribal societies and that of the more advanced agri-urban empires of antiquity, even here in the New World, it would be possible, indeed, to make out quite a case for illiteracy as a factor of the safety in keeping population and essential supplies in a working balance, with little or no damage to the basic sources of renewal. — Russell Lord

The brown toxic cloud strangling Los Angeles never lifts and grows thicker with every immigrant added. One can't help appreciate the streets of Paris will soon become the streets of LA. However, Paris' streets erupted while LA's shall sink into a Third World quagmire much like Bombay or Calcutta, India. When you import that much crime, illiteracy, multiple languages and disease-Americans pick up stakes and move away. — Frosty Wooldridge