Illiteracy Quotes

• My mother said I must always be intolerant of ignorance but understanding of illiteracy. That some people, unable to go to school, were more educated and more intelligent than college professors.

  Maya Angelou

  Education, Mother, School

  FaceBook post by Maya Angelou from Oct 07, 2015

  108 Copy quote

  Show source

• Elimination of illiteracy is as serious an issue to our history as the abolition of slavery.

  Maya Angelou

  Abolition Of Slavery, Issues, Serious

  "Visions: Maya Angelou". Interview With Ken Kelley, www.motherjones.com. May/June 1995.

  58 Copy quote

  Show source

• The illiterate of the 21st century will not be those who cannot read and write, but those who cannot learn, unlearn, and relearn.

  Alvin Toffler

  Inspirational, Change, Positive

  "Alvin Toffler, author of Future Shock, dies aged 87". www.theguardian.com. June 29, 2016.

  278 Copy quote

  Show source

• Better to lose a book to a child, than to lose a child to illiteracy.

  Richard Allington

  Education, Children, Book

  50 Copy quote

• The new illiteracy is about more than not knowing how to read the book or the word; it is about not knowing how to read the world.

  Henry Giroux

  Book, Reading, Knowing

  73 Copy quote

• Literacy is much more than an educational priority - it is the ultimate investment in the future and the first step towards all the new forms of literacy required in the twenty-first century. We wish to see a century where every child is able to read and to use this skill to gain autonomy.

  Irina Bokova

  Education, Children, Future

  66 Copy quote

• Freedom is meaningless if people cannot put food in their stomachs, if they can have no shelter, if illiteracy and disease continue to dog them.

  Nelson Mandela

  Dog, People, Shelter

  Nelson Mandela (2011). “Nelson Mandela By Himself: The Authorised Book of Quotations”, p.159, Pan Macmillan

  38 Copy quote

  Show source

• People are the common denominator of progress; no improvement is possible with unimproved people.

  John Kenneth Galbraith

  Teaching, People, Progress

  John Kenneth Galbraith (1962). “Economic development”

  27 Copy quote

  Show source

• In these days of widespread illiteracy, functional illiteracy... anything that keeps people stupid is a felony.

  Harlan Ellison

  Stupid, People, These Days

  Harlan Ellison (1989). “Harlan Ellison's watching”

  36 Copy quote

  Show source

• Our real illiteracy is our inability to create

  Friedensreich Hundertwasser

  Real, Inability

  38 Copy quote

• Illiteracy is rampant. People are out of communication.

  Karen Black

  Communication, People

  28 Copy quote

• The ratio of literacy to illiteracy is constant, but nowadays the illiterates can read and write.

  Alberto Moravia

  Writing, Ratios, Literacy

  Quoted in Observer (London), 14 Oct. 1979

  39 Copy quote

  Show source

• If every parent understood the huge educational benefits and intense happiness brought about by reading aloud to their children, and if every parent- and every adult caring for a child-read aloud a minimum of three stories a day to the children in our lives, we could probably wipe out illiteracy within one generation.

  Mem Fox

  Children, Educational, Reading

  55 Copy quote

• There aren't enough professionals to solve the world's problems. There will never be enough doctors to solve the health problems of the world. There will never be enough teachers to solve the education problems of the world - illiteracy. There will never be enough missionaries to care and comfort and share the Good News. It has to be done by normal, ordinary people.

  Rick Warren

  Teacher, Doctors, People

  Source: www.pbs.org

  20 Copy quote

  Show source

• You can rule ignorance; you can manipulate the illiterate; you can do whatever you want when a people are uneducated, so that goes in line with corrupt business and corrupt politics.

  will.i.am

  Ignorance, Rapper, People

  "Biography / Personal Quotes". www.imdb.com.

  57 Copy quote

  Show source

• Educational legislation nowadays is largely in the hands of illiterate people, and the illiterate will take good care that their illiteracy is not made a reproach on them.

  Katharine Fullerton Gerould

  Educational, Hands, People

  Katharine Fullerton Gerould (1920). “Modes and Morals”

  23 Copy quote

  Show source

• There are worse crimes than burning books. One of them is not reading them.

  Joseph Brodsky

  Education, Reading, Book

  "The Balancing Act: Mastering the Competing Demands of Leadership". Book by Kerry Patterson, Joseph Grenny, Al Switzler and Ron McMillan, 1996.

  62 Copy quote

  Show source

• Building a godly life on the sand of scriptural illiteracy is impossible.

  Edwin Louis Cole

  Godly, Impossible, Sand

  6 Copy quote

• Political sovereignty is but a mockery without the means of meeting poverty and illiteracy and disease. Self-determination is but a slogan if the future holds no hope.

  John F. Kennedy

  Determination, Mean, Self

  Address to the United Nations General Assembly, delivered 25 September 1961

  15 Copy quote

  Show source

• I want to wage war against illiteracy, poverty, unemployment, unfair competition, communitarianism, delinquency.

  Nicolas Sarkozy

  War, Competition, Unemployment

  19 Copy quote

• Illiteracy must be banished from the land if we shall attain that high destiny as the foremost of the enlightened nations of the world which, under Providence, we ought to achieve.

  William McKinley

  Destiny, Land, World

  William McKinley (2012). “A Supplement to A Compilation of the Messages and Papers of the Presidents”, p.19, tredition

  24 Copy quote

  Show source

• The state of our educational system is a disgrace to our country. We have an elementary and secondary school system in which close to half of the youngsters never graduate properly. It's a disgrace that there is more illiteracy today than there was 100 years ago.

  Milton Friedman

  Country, Educational, School

  Source: www.foxnews.com

  7 Copy quote

  Show source

• Hatred, intolerance, poor hygienic conditions and violence all have roots in illiteracy, so we're trying to do something to help the poor and the needy.

  Abdul Qadeer Khan

  Roots, Hatred, Trying

  23 Copy quote

• As of today, we do not need expert reports by the authoritative analytical institutions to realise that the reasons for such a situation in our community lie in global inequality, poverty and illiteracy.

  Nursultan Nazarbayev

  Lying, Community, Experts

  48 Copy quote

• The illiteracy level of our children are appalling.

  George W. Bush

  Children, Levels, Funny Bush

  President Bush's Speech to the Nation's Mayors at Winter Meeting at the Capital Hilton Hotel, Washington, D.C., georgewbush-whitehouse.archives.gov. January 23, 2004.

  14 Copy quote

  Show source