Quotes & Sayings About Literacy

The aim of education is growth: the aim of growth is more growth — John Dewey

There is a very strong socialist movement in Jamaica. I was in Jamaica years ago. All the talk, all day they talk politics. The literacy rate is very low. Everyone is so interested in politics, more than those who can read in the United States. — Huey Newton

Literacy is the jump-off point from which all of life's successes take flight. — Lauri Fortino

...literacy is as vital as food, security, limiting population growth, and control of the environment.

Education, after all, is the one issue that affects every other one. I think of it in the same way as dropping a pebble into a pond and getting a ripple effect. Educated people make more money and are more likely to escape poverty. Educated parents raise healthier children.

...The list goes on, just as ripples in a body of water emanate outward. — John Wood

Reading is like breathing in and writing is like breathing out, and storytelling is what links both: it is the soul of literacy. The most powerful tool that we have to strengthen literacy is often the most underused and overlooked, and that is a child's own stories. — Pam Allyn

One glance at a book and you hear the voice of another person, perhaps someone dead for 1,000 years. To read is to voyage through time. — Carl Sagan

We have the lowest student-teacher ratio and spend five times as much on schools than war - the opposite of what the United States does. [explaining why Cuba has the highest literacy in the world] — Fidel Castro

Presentation literacy isn't an optional extra for the few. It's a core skill for the twenty-first century. — Chris J. Anderson

Literacy in North America has historically been focused on reading, not writing; consumption, not production. — Clive Thompson

Before Gutenberg, libraries were small
the Cambridge University library had only 122 volumes in 1424, for instance; after Gutenberg literacy became widespread. — Larry Stone

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

When I talk about "cyborg literacy," I mean a set of skills and social practices that optimize the ability to use physical and cognitive technologies to augment, amplify, or extend human thinking and communication capabilities. — Howard Rheingold

(see figure 1) or the macro-steps of the day's plans (see figure 4). The level of detail depends on the context and the child's needs for communication support. To help encourage literacy and develop sight words at — Teresa Garland Mot Otr

Once you learn to read, you will be forever free. — Frederick Douglass

You have not fully expressed your power as a voter until you have scientific literacy in topics that matter for future political issues. — Neil DeGrasse Tyson

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

True to a unique tradition of Rome, all the nearby walls had been slathered with that unique institution of the Latin race: graffiti. Daubed in paint of every color were slogans such as Death to the aristocrats! and The shade of Tribune Ateius calls out for blood! and May the curse of Ateius fall on Crassus and all his friends! All of this was scrawled wretchedly and spelled worse. Rome has an extremely high rate of literacy, mostly so that the citizens can practice this particular art form. — John Maddox Roberts

Financial literacy is not an end in itself, but a step-by-step process. It begins in childhood and continues throughout a person's life all the way to retirement. Instilling the financial-literacy message in children is especially important, because they will carry it for the rest of their lives. The results of the survey are very encouraging, and we want to do our part to make sure all children develop and strengthen their financial-literacy skills. — George Karl

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 Feynman

Sometimes you have no idea what you are you doing, but you just do it anyways. And that can be a good thing — Anita Babic

and here is where unsentimental history and statistical literacy can change our view of modernity, for they show that nostalgia for a peaceable past is the biggest delusion of all — Steven Pinker

Just as we would not traditionally assume that someone is literate if they can read but not write, we should not assume that someone possesses media literacy if they can consume but not express themselves — Henry Jenkins

When you show the odd flash of contextual intelligence, I forget your generation can't read, Clarice.
Hannibal Lecter — Thomas Harris

And it wasn't just the subjugation of human beings that distressed her but the level of daily, almost casual brutality. Even for routine punishments there were blood-stained stakes, lead-tipped whips. She's always rather admired the Romans, for their literacy, their order, their engineering, their respect for the law. Now, she was finding, she'd never fully imagined this side of their civilisation. — Stephen Baxter

Ignorance is king. Many would not profit by his abdication. Many enrich themselves by means of his dark monarchy. They are his Court, and in his name they defraud and govern, enrich themselves and perpetuate their power. Even literacy they fear, for the written word is another channel of communication that might cause their enemies to become united. Their weapons are keen-honed, and they use them with skill. They will press the battle upon the world when their interests are threatened, and the violence which follows will last until the structure of society as it now exists is leveled to rubble, and a new society emerges. I am sorry. But that is how I see it. — Walter M. Miller Jr.

Not only is writing more important than ever, but visual literacy is vital. We don't teach enough design, art, visual things. We have to recognize what we're seeing. It matters if you send someone a cluttered design. It matters more than ever. — Marissa Moss

Libraries are, at heart, helpful and kind providers. It is hard for those who perhaps don't feel the need to visit their local libraries to understand what a vital service they provide for communities and individuals who do - and those who do are often the most vulnerable. — Robert Popple

Late fees are the enemy of early literacy because instead of promoting responsible behavior, they suppress library visits for some of the people who need the institution the most. And of course these fees don't promote children being more responsible, but only reveal to children how irresponsible, ignorant, or unaware their own parents are. -- Amy Dickinson — Kyle Cassidy

When I say 'publishing is the new literacy,' I don't mean there's no role for curation, for improving material, for editing material, for fact-checking material. I mean literally, the act of putting something out in public used to be reserved in the same way. — Clay Shirky

The tension between autonomy and expertise had been, at a basic level, fundamental to the Protestant experience itself from the Reformation forward, as the doctrine of the priesthood of all believers, increasing literacy, and vernacular translations of the Bible undermined the clerical caste's monopoly on spiritual authority. In the twentieth-century United States, professional specialization, the Progressive emphasis on technical expertise, and simply the ever more complex nature of modern urban life pulled readers toward greater reliance on literary guidance, while the logic of consumerism, rooted in the all-powerful choice to buy or not to buy, further reinforced the notion of reader autonomy. — Matthew Hedstrom

Americans born since World War II have grown up in a media-saturated environment. From childhood, we have developed a sort of advertising literacy, which combines appreciation for technique with skepticism about motives. We respond to ads with at least as much rhetorical intelligence as we apply to any other form of persuasion. — Virginia Postrel

No skill is more crucial to the future of a child than literacy. — Los Angeles Times

Learning power comprises both literacy and numeracy, and is ultimately more fundamental than either of them. — Guy Claxton

Not learning how to read is not another style of literacy, and not learning to see others as ends in themselves is not another style of ethics. It is a failure of ethics. — Sam Harris

We need science education to produce scientists, but we need it equally to create literacy in the public. Man has a fundamental urge to comprehend the world about him, and science gives today the only world picture which we can consider as valid. It gives an understanding of the inside of the atom and of the whole universe, or the peculiar properties of the chemical substances and of the manner in which genes duplicate in biology. An educated layman can, of course, not contribute to science, but can enjoy and participate in many scientific discoveries which as constantly made. Such participation was quite common in the 19th century, but has unhappily declined. Literacy in science will enrich a person's life. — Hans Bethe

Who made you Queen of Literacy? Go sit in your car! — Jackson Pearce

Producing satire is kind of hopeless because of the literacy rate of the American public. — Frank Zappa

Countries with a high percentage of nonbelievers are among the freest, most stable, best-educated, and healthiest nations on earth. When nations are ranked according to a human-development index, which measures such factors as life expectancy, literacy rates, and educational attainment, the five highest-ranked countries
Norway, Sweden, Australia, Canada, and the Netherlands
all have high degrees of nonbelief. Of the fifty countires at the bottom of the index, all are intensly religious. The nations with the highest homicide rates tend to be more religious; those with the greatest levels of gender equality are the least religious. These associations say nothing about whether atheism leads to positive social indicators or the other way around. But the idea that atheists are somehow less moral, honest, or trustworthy have been disproven by study after study. — Greg Graffin

I was well traveled, and I created this illusion of literacy through reading and writing. I wrote a book of short stories. — Tom T. Hall

Literacy, written language is a very late acquisition in terms of human evolution. — Jean Berko Gleason

Literacy rots the brain, I'm afraid. And a rotten mind is of no use to the New Order. Sadly, there must be consequences. — James Patterson

While we may lose track of certain goals intermittently throughout the decades, I think we as a nation can be nimble when we need to be. All the buzz today is on the need for science literacy. That is on the agenda in ways it hasn't been in previous decades. — Neil DeGrasse Tyson

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

The world's biggest problems are the world's biggest market opportunities. And that's a huge thing. Solve hunger, literacy and energy problems, get the gratitude of the world and become a billionaire in the process. — Peter Diamandis

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

No one reads; if someone does read, he doesn't understand; if he understands, he immediately forgets. — Stanislaw Lem

More and more, job listings are exclusively available online and as technology evolves nearly every occupation now requires a basic level of digital literacy with web navigation, email access and participation in social media. — Michael K. Powell

When we pick up the newspaper at breakfast, we expect - we even demand - that it brings us momentous events since the night before ... We expect our two-week vacations to be romantic, exotic, cheap, and effortless..We expect anything and everything. We expect the contradictory and the impossible. We expect compact cars which are spacious; luxurious cars which are economical. We expect to be rich and charitable, powerful and merciful, active and reflective, kind and competitive. We expect to be inspired by mediocre appeals for excellence, to be made literate by illiterate appeals for literacy ... to go to 'a church of our choice' and yet feel its guiding power over us, to revere God and to be God. Never have people been more the masters of their environment. Yet never has a people felt more deceived and disappointed. For never has a people expected so much more than the world could offer. — Daniel J. Boorstin

It is intolerable that around 1 in 5 of the world's adults are illiterate. How can we build equitable information societies or thriving democracies if so many remain without the basic tools of literacy? — Koichiro Matsuura

Once he could read and write he would have a mind fit to rule. So ran the democratic doctrine. But instead of a mind, universal literacy has given him rubber stamps, rubber stamps inked with advertising slogans, with editorials, with published scientific data, with the trivialities of the tabloids and the platitudes of history, but quite innocent of original thought. — Edward Bernays

Science literacy is being plugged into the forces that power the universe. There is no excuse for thinking that the Sun, which is a million times the size of Earth, orbits Earth. — Neil DeGrasse Tyson

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

We're promoting such a narrow version of literacy that we're not including what a lot of boys like. — Jon Scieszka

The goal of providing basic literacy and education to all the world's people is still the most basic development challenge. — Talal Abu-Ghazaleh

Energy literacy means you can see the waste in disposing of a plastic bottle after you've drunk water from some place on the other side of the world. — Saul Griffith

There are still many tribal cultures where poetry and song, there is just one word for them. There are other cultures with literacy where poetry and song are distinguished. But poetry always remembers that it has its origins in music. — Edward Hirsch

Every country has the writers she requires and deserves, which is why Nicaragua, in two hundred years of literacy, has produced one writer-a mediocre poet. — Paul Theroux

I think there in a great deal to be said for religious education in the sense of teaching about religion and biblical literacy. Both those things, by the way, I suspect will prepare a child to give up religion. If you are taught comparative religion, you are more likely to realise that there are other religions than the one you have been brought up in. And if you are if you are taught to read the bible, I can think of almost nothing more calculated to turn you off religion. — Richard Dawkins

To get the medium's magic to work for one's aims rather than against them is to attain literacy. — Alan Kay

Fairy tales in childhood are stepping stones throughout life, leading the way through trouble and trial. The value of fairy tales lies not in a brief literary escape from reality, but in the gift of hope that goodness truly is more powerful than evil and that even the darkest reality can lead to a Happily Ever After. Do not take that gift of hope lightly. It has the power to conquer despair in the midst of sorrow, to light the darkness in the valleys of life, to whisper "One more time" in the face of failure. Hope is what gives life to dreams, making the fairy tale the reality. — L.R. Knost

Love of books is the best of all. — Jackie Kennedy

Readers usually ignore the typographic interface, gliding comfortably along literacy's habitual groove. Sometimes, however, the interface should be allowed to fail. By making itself evident, typography can illuminate the construction and identity of a page, screen, place, or product. — Ellen Lupton

No, Fulton was colored. She understands this luminous truth. Natchez did not lie about that: she has seen it in the man's books, made plain by her new literacy. In the last few days she has learned how to read, like a slave does, one forbidden word at a time. — Colson Whitehead

I decided in '96 to dedicate my life to mostly promoting literacy and education for girls in rural Pakistan and Afghanistan. — Greg Mortenson

Every citizen's vote should count in America, not just the votes of partisan insiders in the Electoral College. The Electoral College was necessary when communications were poor, literacy was low and voters lacked information about out-of-state figures, which is clearly no longer the case. — Gene Green

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

We fail in even the simplest of all scientific observations-nobody looks up anymore. — Neil DeGrasse Tyson

Bit literacy means letting the bits go; anything else perpetuates the problem. — Mark Hurst

Librarians' values are as sound as Girl Scouts': truth, free speech, and universal literacy. And, like Scouts, they possess a quality that I think makes librarians invaluable and indispensable: they want to help. They want to help us. They want to be of service. And they're not trying to sell us anything. — Marilyn Johnson

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

Let us suppose that such a person began by observing those Christian activities which are, in a sense, directed towards this present world. He would find that this religion had, as a mere matter of historical fact, been the agent which preserved such secular civilization as survived the fall of the Roman Empire; that to it Europe owes the salvation, in those perilous ages, of civilized agriculture, architecture, laws, and literacy itself. He would find that this same religion has always been healing the sick and caring for the poor; that it has, more than any other, blessed marriage; and that arts and philosophy tend to flourish in its neighborhood. In a word, it is always either doing, or at least repenting with shame for not having done, all the things which secular humanitarianism enjoins. If our enquirer stopped at this point he would have no difficulty in classifying Christianity - giving it its place on a map of the 'great religions. — C.S. Lewis

Reflecting this difference is the Indian state of Kerala. Although it is one of the poorer parts of the country, it has higher literacy and greater gender equality than much of the rest of India. Without resorting to a coercive approach such as a "one-child policy" Kerala has achieved a rate of population growth lower than China's and also lower than that in some developed countries, including — Peter Singer

The industrial powerhouse of 1950 [Detroit] is now a crime-ridden wasteland with a functioning literacy rate equivalent to West African basket-cases. — Mark Steyn

Literacy, the visual technology, dissolved the tribal magic by means of its stress on fragmentation and specialization and created the individual. — Marshall McLuhan

We need to have financial literacy in America, not just complaining about obstructionism. We need solutions. And I think the solutions are using high finance to make capitalism work for people around the world. — Kabir Sehgal

The schools can't cover all the values that go along with how you handle your money. For example, a financial literacy class might not teach me to hate debt the way my grandmother, Big Mama did. — Michelle Singletary

Food became for me a way of becoming self-sufficient with my hands, to regain manual literacy, which I think has been lost on our generation and certainly younger generations. Very few people can actually make things with their hands and do things with their hands. — Timothy Ferriss

A hundred years ago, an average teenager knew countless authors, and, a sex position or two. Today, an average teenager knows countless sex positions, and, an author or two. — Mokokoma Mokhonoana

optimal literacy teaching and learning can only be achieved when skillful, knowledgeable, and dedicated teachers are given the freedom and latitude to use their professional judgment to make instructional decisions that enable students to achieve their full literacy potential. — Linda B. Gambrell

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

I think the money for the solutions for global poverty is on Wall Street. Wall Street allocates capital. And we need to get capital to the ideas that are successful, whether it's microfinance, whether it's through financial literacy programs, Wall Street can be the engine that makes capital get to the people who need it. — Kabir Sehgal

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

(Catholic) monks taught metallurgy, introduced new crops, copied ancient texts, preserved literacy, pioneered in technology, invented champagne, improved the European landscape, provided for wanderers of every stripe, and looked after the lost and shipwrecked. — Thomas E. Woods Jr.

The professor is not merely an information dispensing machine, but a skilled navigator of a complex landscape. — William Badke

There are over 200 million illiterate women in India. This low literacy negatively impacts not just their lives but also their families' and the country's economic development. A girl's lack of education also has a negative impact on the health and well-being of her children. — Sachin Tendulkar

Words are power. The more words you know and can recognize, use, define, understand, the more power you will have as a human being ... The more language you know, the more likely it is that no one can get over on you.
selection from book: Our Difficult Sunlight: A Guide to Poetry, Literacy & Social Justice in Classroom & Community — Quraysh Ali Lansana & Georgia A. Popoff

If I had my choice, every high school would be teaching financial literacy along with math and science. — Gregory Meeks

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

He longed for the little cabin and the sun-kissed sea - for the cool interior of the well-built house, and for the never-ending wonders of the many books. — Edgar Rice Burroughs

I have found that educators yearn to be told something like this: There will be no more initiatives - at least for a time. Instead, we will focus only on what will have an immediate and dramatic impact on learning in your classrooms: ensuring the implementation of a common, content-rich curriculum; good lessons; and plenty of meaningful literacy activities (such as close reading, writing, and discussion) across the curriculum. — Mike Schmoker

Participatory culture shifts the focus of literacy from one of individual expression to community involvement. — Henry Jenkins

I see this land flowing with books, Father. Widespread literacy. Books everywhere, as common as they used to be in circulation before the Crossing, affordable even for the poor. — Erika Johansen

The most effective reading teachers are teachers who read. According to Morrison, Jacobs, and Swinyard (1999), "Perhaps the most influential teacher behavior to influence students' literacy development is personal reading, both in and out of school" (p. 81). — Donalyn Miller

Obviously, every child should be given the best possible opportunity to acquire literacy skills. — Hugh Mackay

Universal literacy, taken for granted today, was a direct result of the Reformation's reemphasis upon the centrality of Bible reading, — Gene Edward Veith Jr.

I like the relative literacy of at least some of England. I mean, I didn't come for the food or the weather! — Andrew Solomon

The Harper Government is committed to ensuring that seniors have the skills they need to make solid financial choices. Seniors today face an increasingly complex financial marketplace, and it will take the combined efforts of public and private sector organizations to help seniors navigate the many financial choices they face. The start of Financial Literacy Month is an excellent opportunity to thank the Canadian Bankers Association and encourage other private sector organizations to take an active role in providing financial literacy support to Canada's seniors. — Kevin Sorenson

Someone had painted FUK U on the dented trunk.
"What does it say about the literacy rate when you can even spell fuck. It's sad," Eve decided. — J.D. Robb

Retired soldiers are the worst sufferers when they engage in financial operations. I have found that their credulity far exceeds that of widows--and that is saying a good deal. — Agatha Christie

Cyberattacks have become a permanent fixture on the international scene because they have become easy and cheap to launch. Basic computer literacy and a modest budget can go a long way toward invading a country's cyberspace. — Evgeny Morozov