no subject of study is more important than reading…all other intellectual powers depend on it.
Interpretation
Reading is essential for developing all other intellectual abilities.
This quote emphasizes the foundational role that reading plays in the development of intellectual skills and knowledge. It suggests that no area of study holds greater significance than the ability to read, as the act of reading enhances understanding, critical thinking, and the acquisition of knowledge across all subjects.
In practice
During a speech at a literacy event, I quoted Barzun to emphasize the importance of reading.
Let us face a pluralistic world in which there are no universal churches, no single remedy for all diseases, no one way to teach or write or sing, no magic diet, no world poets, and no chosen races, but only the wretched and wonderfully diversified human race.
Machines are admirable and tyrannize only with the user's consent. Where, then, is the enemy? Not where the machine gives relief from drudgery but where human judgment abdicates. The smoothest machine-made product of the age is the organization man, for even the best organizing principle tends to corrupt, and the mechanical principle corrupts absolutely.
In teaching you cannot see the fruit of a day's work. It is invisible and remains so, maybe for twenty years.
I can only think that the book is read because it deals with the difficulties of schooling, which do not change. Please note: the difficulties, not the problems. Problems are solved or disappear with the revolving times. Difficulities remain. It will always be difficult to teach well, to learn accurately; to read, write, and count readily and competently; to acquire a sense of history and start one's education or anothers.
Convince yourself that you are working in clay, not marble, on paper not eternal bronze: Let that first sentence be as stupid as it wishes.
The world has long observed that small acts of immorality, if repeated, will destroy character. It is equally manifest, though never said, that uttering nonsense and half-truth without cease ends by destroying Intellect
The real safeguard of democracy is education.
You have got to keep autistic children engaged with the world. You cannot let them tune out.
Universities are not here to be mediums for the coercion of other people, they're here to be mediums for the free exchange of ideas.
Our true birthplace is that in which we cast for the first time an intelligent eye on ourselves. My first homelands were my books.
I am convinced that no one is fully educated without a full grounding in the arts.
Before you sleep, read something that is exquisite, and worth remembering.
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