One of the little-celebrated powers of Presidents (and other high government officials) is to listen to their critics with just enough sympathy to ensure their silence.
John Kenneth GalbraithRead
People are the common denominator of progress. So no improvement is possible with unimproved people, and advance is certain when people are liberated and educated. It would be wrong to dismiss the importance of roads, railroads, power plants, mills,and the other familiar furniture of economic development. But we are coming to realize that there is a certain sterility in economic monuments that stand alone in a sea of illiteracy. Conquest of illiteracy comes first.
Interpretation
What this quote means
The quote emphasizes that progress relies on the improvement of people through education and literacy rather than just infrastructure.
John Kenneth Galbraith highlights the importance of human development as the foundation of societal progress. While physical advancements like infrastructure are necessary, they become ineffective without educated individuals who can utilize them. The quote suggests that literacy and education are the keys to unlocking true economic and social progress, stressing that without improvement in the populace, advancements in technology and infrastructure are superficial and ineffective.
Themes
EducationProgressLiteracyImprovementEconomic Development
In practice
Example use cases
This quote can be used in a seminar about the importance of education in community development.
More from John Kenneth Galbraith
All quotes →If all else fails, immortality can always be assured by spectacular error.
John Kenneth GalbraithRead
The modern conservative is engaged in one of man's oldest exercises in moral philosophy; that is, the search for a superior moral justification for selfishness.
John Kenneth GalbraithRead
All successful revolutions are the kicking in of a rotten door.
John Kenneth GalbraithRead
Money differs from an automobile or mistress in being equally important to those who have it and those who do not.
John Kenneth GalbraithRead
People of privilege will always risk their complete destruction rather than surrender any material part of their advantage.
John Kenneth GalbraithRead
Similar quotes
Imagination grows by exercise.
W. Somerset MaughamRead
Teachers have told us across the country that what's severely outdated is the teacher at the front of the classroom as the font of knowledge, because as we know, access to knowledge and information is now ubiquitous. So instead, teachers want to help students learn how to think so that they can be lifelong learners.
Laurene Powell JobsRead
I am not a speed reader. I am a speed understander.
Isaac AsimovRead
The great doctors all got their education off dirt pavements and poverty - not marble floors and foundations.
Martin H. FischerRead
Knowledge people and service people learn the most when they teach .
Peter DruckerRead
My elder brothers were all put apprentices to different trades. I was put to the grammar-school at eight years of age, my father intending to devote me, as the tithe of his sons, to the service of the Church.
Benjamin FranklinRead