A society can exist - many do exist - without writing, but no society can exist without reading.
Interpretation
Reading is essential for the survival of any society, even if writing is not.
Alberto Manguel emphasizes the critical role of reading in maintaining a functioning society. While societies can form and operate without the practice of writing, the act of reading is fundamental for knowledge, communication, and cultural continuity, thereby reinforcing the idea that literacy is vital for societal health and progress.
In practice
In a speech about improving education, one might quote Manguel to highlight the importance of reading skills.
The stories that unfold in the space of a writer's study, the objects chosen to watch over a desk, the books selected to sit on the shelves, all weave a web of echoes and reflections of meanings and affections, that lend a visitor the illusion that something of the owner of this space lives on between these walls, even if the owner is no more.
From fire, water, the passage of time, neglectful readers, and the hand of the censor, each of my books has escaped to tell me its story.
One book calls to another unexpectedly, creating alliances across different cultures and centuries.
It has always been my experience that, whatever groupings I choose for my books, the space in which I plan to lodge them necessarily reshapes my choice and, more important, in no time proves too small for them and forces me to change my arrangement. In a library, no empty shelf remains empty for long. Like Nature, libraries abhor a vacuum, and the problem of space is inherent in the very nature of any collection of books.
My books hold between their covers every story I've ever known and still remember, or have now forgotten, or may one day read; they fill the space around me with ancient and new voices.
I have no feelings of guilt regarding the books I have not read and perhaps will never read; I know that my books have unlimited patience. They will wait for me till the end of my days.
There's something missing about how we're informing the youngsters coming along about what matters in the world. We teach them the numbers and the letters, but we fail to communicate the importance of our connection to the living world.
When you're given a newspaper column, you're not being paid to sit on a fence and scratch your chin and say 'On the one hand this' and 'On the other hand that.' You're getting paid for your opinion.
Through books and photographs, I saw a world that was not my own - and I realized that there was another world. That's why I'm concerned about education, because it helps our children see other worlds.
The greatest investment a young person can make is in their own education, in their own mind. Because money comes and goes. Relationships come and go. But what you learn once stays with you forever.
I wanted to use my experience to teach kids that racism has no place in hearts and minds.
Now...in an abundant society where people have laptops, cell phones, ipods and minds like empty rooms, I still plod along with books.
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