Quotes on Literacy

There is more treasure in books than in all the pirates' loot on Treasure Island...

No player in the NBA was born wanting to play basketball. The desire to play ball or to read must be planted. The last 25 years of research show that reading aloud to a child is the oldest, cheapest and must successful method of instilling that desire. Shooting baskets with a child creates a basketball player; reading to a child creates a reader.

Media literacy is not just important, it's absolutely critical. It's going to make the difference between whether kids are a tool of the mass media or whether the mass media is a tool for kids to use.

Learn your language well and command it well, and you will have the first component to life.

If you give people literacy, bad ideas can be attacked and experiments tried, and lessons will accumulate.

The way a book is read, which is to say, the qualities a reader brings to a book can have as much to do with its worth as anything the author puts into it.

One test of the correctness of educational procedure is the happiness of the child.

While good business ideas are plentiful, many entrepreneurs struggle to understand payroll taxes, health care and other thorny issues… In other words, they don't have the financial literacy to scale their businesses and attract investors.

You cannot open a book without learning something.

I find television very educating. Every time somebody turns on the set, I go into the other room and read a book.

The pleasure of all reading is doubled when one lives with another who shares the same books.

Words are the voice of the heart.

T'is true: there's magic in the web of it.

I had just taken to reading. I had just discovered the art of leaving my body to sit impassive in a crumpled up attitude in a chair or sofa, while I wandered over the hills and far away in novel company and new scenes... My world began to expand very rapidly,... the reading habit had got me securely.

When I step into this library, I cannot understand why I ever step out of it.

What's a book? Everything or nothing. The eye that sees it all.

Force yourself to reflect on what you read, paragraph by paragraph.

I will defend the importance of bedtime stories to my last gasp.

I don't think anybody anywhere can talk about the future of their people or of an organization without talking about education. Whoever controls the education of our children controls our future.

Literacy is not a luxury, it is a right and a responsibility. If our world is to meet the challenges of the twenty-first century we must harness the energy and creativity of all our citizens.

Literacy unlocks the door to learning throughout life, is essential to development and health, and opens the way for democratic participation and active citizenship.