Illiterate Quotes - Page 5

• A dog doesn't care if you are rich or poor, educated of illiterate, clever or dull. Give him your heart and he will give you his. It was really quite simple, and yet we humans, so much wiser and more sophisticated, have always had trouble figuring out what really counts and what does not.

  John Grogan

  Dog, Clever, Heart

  John Grogan (2008). “Marley & Me tie-in: Life and Love with the World's Worst Dog”, William Morrow Paperbacks

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• The public is totally illiterate in America. It can't read at all. It's absolutely insensitive to words.

  James Purdy

  America, Insensitive

  Source: www.interviewmagazine.com

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• The thing the ecologically illiterate don't realize about an ecosystem is that it's a system. A system! A system maintains a certain fluid stability that can be destroyed by a misstep in just one niche.

  Frank Herbert

  Ecosystems, Niche, Realizing

  Frank Herbert (2003). “Dune”, p.427, Penguin

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• The Romans had been able to post their laws on boards in public places, confidant that enough literate people existed to read them; far into the Middle Ages, even kings remained illiterate.

  John Roberts

  Kings, Law, People

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• I would like to apologize for referring to George W. Bush as a 'deserter.' What I meant to say is that George W. Bush is a deserter, an election thief, a drunk driver, a WMD liar, and a functional illiterate. And he poops his pants.

  Michael Moore

  Liars, Wmd, Drunk

  Statement in 2004. "'Capitalism is evil … you have to eliminate it'" by Chris McGreal, www.theguardian.com. January 30, 2010.

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• I don't say things like "the grace of God." All that's white noise to me, not because I'm an intellectual. For many people, it's gibberish. Likewise, the idea that the Koran was dictated by an archaic illiterate is a fantasy.

  Christopher Hitchens

  Ideas, White, People

  Source: www.wanliss.com

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• I've discovered that most critics themselves are cinematically illiterate. They don't really know much about movies. They don't know the history. They don't know the technology. They don't know anything. So for them to try to analyze it, they're lost.

  George Lucas

  Technology, Trying, Lost

  "Cinematic Phenomenon". Academy of Achievement Interview, www.achievement.org. June 19, 1999.

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• It's a great lesson in modesty that you realize you're illiterate in a field that you think you're an expert in.

  Wim Wenders

  Thinking, Experts, Lessons

  "Director Wim Wenders PINA Interview". Roundtable interview, collider.com. December 21, 2011.

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• The Ragamuffin rabble are the unsung assembly of saved sinners who are little in their own sight, conscious of their brokenness and powerlessness before God, and who cast themselves on His mercy. Startled by the extravagant love of God, they do not require success, fame, wealth, or power to validate their worth.  Their spirit transcends all distinctions between the powerful and powerless, educated and illiterate, billionaires and bag ladies, high-tech geeks and low-tech nerds, males and females, the circus and the sanctuary.

  Brennan Manning

  Powerful, Sight, Nerd

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• When we begin to understand the concept of Karma we will never ever blame God for anything that happens to us. We will realise that we are responsible for all that happens to us. As we sow, so shall we reap. Rich or poor, saint or sinner, miser or philanthropist, learned or illiterate ... This is the Universal Law that applies to individuals, to whole communities, societies, nations and races. As we sow, so shall we reap.

  Dada Vaswani

  Karma, Rich Or Poor, Race

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• We are underbred and low-lived and illiterate; and in this respect I confess I do not make any very broad distinction between theilliterateness of my townsman who cannot read at all and the illiterateness of him who has learned to read only what is for children and feeble intellects. We should be as good as the worthies of antiquity, but partly by first knowing how good they were.

  Henry David Thoreau

  Children, Knowing, Literature

  Henry David Thoreau (1882). “Walden”, p.169

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• Part of what makes a situation traumatic is not talking about it. Talking reduces trauma symptoms. When we don't talk about trauma, we remain emotionally illiterate. Our most powerful feelings go unnamed and unspoken.

  Tian Dayton

  Powerful, Talking, Silence

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• When I became thoroughly acquainted with the Greek and Roman authors, I thought it incumbent upon me to do something towards the honor of the place of my nativity, and to vindicate the rhetoric of this ancient forum of our Metropolis from the aspersions of the illiterate by composing A Treatise of the Alercation of the Ancients; wherein I have demonstrated that the purity, sincerity, and simplicity of their diction is nowhere so well preserved as amongst my neighbourhood.

  John Arbuthnot

  Simplicity, Greek, Honor

  George Atherton Aitken, John Arbuthnot (1892). “The Life and Works of John Arbuthnot, M.D.: Fellow of the Royal College of Physicians”

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• I didn't write because in the corps I took mining engineering of all things and, you know, they, they graduate a mining engineer as a sort of an illiterate.

  Rube Goldberg

  Writing, Engineering, Uranium Mining

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• Increasingly, our leaders must deal with dangers that threaten the entire world, where an understanding of those dangers and the possible solutions depends on a good grasp of science. The ozone layer, the greenhouse effect, acid rain, questions of diet and heredity. All require scientific literacy. Can Americans choose the proper leaders and support the proper programs if they themselves are scientifically illiterate? The whole premise of democracy is that it is safe to leave important questions to the court of public opinion - but is it safe to leave them to the court of public ignorance?

  Isaac Asimov

  Rain, Ignorance, Science

  "Combatting U.S. Scientific Illiteracy" by Isaac Asimov, articles.latimes.com. March 31, 1989.

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• The writing has been on the wall for some years now, but we are a nation illiterate in the language of the wall. The writing just gets bigger. Something will eventually bring down the charming, infuriating naïveté of Americans that allows us our blithe consumption and cheerful ignorance of the secret ugliness that bring us whatever we want.

  Barbara Kingsolver

  Wall, Ignorance, Writing

  Barbara Kingsolver (2011). “Small Wonder”, p.317, Faber & Faber

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• Childhood was terrifying for me. A kid has no control. You’re three feet tall, flat broke, unemployed, and illiterate. Terror snaps you awake. You pay keen attention. People can just pick you up and move you and put you down.

  Mary Karr

  Moving, Kids, Feet

  "Mary Karr, The Art of Memoir No. 1". Interview with Amanda Fortini, www.theparisreview.org. 2009.

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• He who has read Kafka's Metamorphosis and can look into his mirror unflinching may technically be able to read print, but is illiterate in the only sense that matters.

  George Steiner

  Mirrors, Looks, May

  George Steiner (2010). “Language and Silence”, p.15, Faber & Faber

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• Clearly, mythology is no toy for children. Nor is it a matter of archaic, merely scholarly concern, of no moment to modern men of action. For its symbols (whether in the tangible form of images or in the abstract form of ideas) touch and release the deepest centers of motivation, moving literate and illiterate alike, moving mobs, moving civilizations.

  Joseph Campbell

  Inspirational, Children, Motivation

  Joseph Campbell (1976). “The Masks of God: Primitive mythology”

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• Our job is to show how it is possible to take an illiterate woman and make her into an engineer in six months and show that she can solar-electrify a village.

  Bunker Roy

  Jobs, Six Months, Village

  "Religion & Ethics NewsWeekly" with Bob Abernethy, www.pbs.org. September 19, 2008.

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• American teens have the worst of all worlds ... Our children are bombarded and confronted with sexual messages, sexual exploitation, and all manner of sexual criticism. But our society is by and large sexually illiterate.

  Faye Wattleton

  Children, Criticism, Teens

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• By any reasonable measure of achievement, the faith of the Enlightenment thinkers in science was justified. Today the greatest divide within humanity is not between races, or religions, or even, as is widely believed, between the literate and illiterate. It is the chasm that separates scientific from prescientific cultures.

  E. O. Wilson

  Race, Achievement, Humanity

  E. O. Wilson (2014). “Consilience: The Unity of Knowledge”, p.72, Vintage

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• The mysteries of the faith are not to [be] explained rashly to anyone. Usually in fact, they cannot be understood by everyone but only by those who are qualified to understand them with informed intelligence. The depth of the divine Scriptures is such that not only the illiterate and uninitiated have difficulty understanding them, but also the educated and the gifted.

  Pope Innocent III

  Understanding, Religion, Atheism

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• Superficial to understand the journal as just a receptable for one's private, secret thoughts - like a confidante who is deaf, dumb, and illiterate. In the journal I do not just express myself more openly than I could to any person; I create myself. ... The journal is a vehicle for my sense of selfhood. It represents me as emotionally and spiritually independent. Therefore (alas) it does not simply record my actual, daily life but rather - in many cases - offers an alternative to it.

  Susan Sontag

  Independent, Dumb, Secret

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• National antipathy is the basest, because the most illiberal and illiterate of all prejudices.

  Jane Porter

  Prejudice, Antipathy

  Sir Philip Sidney, Jane Porter (1807). “Aphorisms of Sir Philip Sidney: With Remarks”, p.112

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