Books won't stay banned. They won't burn. Ideas won't go to jail.
Alfred Whitney GriswoldRead
Reading is the gateway to so many things that helps makes it possible for seven billion people to live together on one planet. Literature is the great extra-somatic keeper of our knowledge of what it is to be human. Reading elevates us. We read to be our best selves.
Interpretation
Reading connects people and enriches our understanding of humanity.
This quote emphasizes the critical role that reading plays in fostering understanding and connection among humanity. It suggests that literature serves as a repository of knowledge, shaping our identity and encouraging us to strive for our best selves as individuals who coexist in a diverse world.
In practice
In a speech about the importance of education, you might quote this to highlight how reading fosters unity.
Books won't stay banned. They won't burn. Ideas won't go to jail.
The student is half afraid to meet one of the great philosophers face to face. He feels himself inadequate and thinks he will not understand him. But if he only knew, the great man, just because of his greatness, is much more intelligible than his modern commentator. The simplest student will be able to understand, if not all, yet a very great deal of what Plato said; but hardly anyone can understand some modern books on Platonism.
Every time you finish a book, you have a terrible feeling that there's just never going to be another one. But fortunately, so far, the next one has always shown up.
You must write every single day of your life... You must lurk in libraries and climb the stacks like ladders to sniff books like perfumes and wear books like hats upon your crazy heads... may you be in love every day for the next 20,000 days. And out of that love, remake a world.
The future belongs to young people with an education and the imagination to create.
Every time a student walks past a really urgent, expressive piece of architecture that belongs to his college, it can help reassure him that he does have that mind, does have that soul.
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