Illiteracy Quotes

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

The man who reads nothing at all is better educated than the man who reads nothing but newspapers.

My mother said I must always be intolerant of ignorance but understanding of illiteracy.

To the uneducated an A is just three sticks.

Beware the man of a single book.

The person who deserves most pity is a lonesome one on a rainy day who doesn't know how to read.

The worst illiterate is the political illiterate, he doesn’t hear, doesn’t speak, nor participates in the political events. He doesn’t know the cost of life, the price of the bean, of the fish, of the flour, of the rent, of the shoes and of the medicine, all depends on political decisions. The political illiterate is so stupid that he is proud and swells his chest saying that he hates politics. The imbecile doesn’t know that, from his political ignorance is born the prostitute, the abandoned child, and the worst thieves of all, the bad politician, corrupted and flunky of the national and multinational companies.

Children deprived of words become school dropouts; dropouts deprived of hope behave delinquently. Amateur censors blame delinquency on reading immoral books and magazines, when in fact, the inability to read anything is the basic trouble.

Prisons do not disappear social problems, they disappear human beings. Homelessness, unemployment, drug addiction, mental illness, and illiteracy are only a few of the problems that disappear from public view when the human beings contending with them are relegated to cages.

LOL could go and take a running jump. I wasn’t made for illiteracy; it simply didn’t come naturally.

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

School made us 'literate' but did not teach us to read for pleasure.

Through their intellectual disability or mental illiteracy, some cannot free themselves from the imprisonment of irrevocable idiocy and feel condemned to find gratifying compensation by extracting the vilest qualities from the deep quarters of their dark self. ("Ugly mug offense")

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

As centuries of dictators have known, an illiterate crowd is the easiest to rule; since the craft of reading cannot be untaught once it has been acquired, the second-best recourse is to limit its scope.

I see libraries and librarians as frontline soldiers in the war against illiteracy and the lack of imagination.

This will never be a civilized country until we expend more money for books than we do for chewing gum.

You really do own your illiteracy, don’t you?” “Yeah, I’m thinking about moving to America and running for public office.

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

Yes and I appreciate it. But this is going to be difficult enough without running my words through a filter of illiteracy.

She said that I must always be intolerant of ignorance but understanding of illiteracy.

Maybe there is no better novel in the world than Denton Welch's In Youth Is Pleasure. Just holding it in my hands, so precious, so beyond gay, so deliciously subversive, is enough to make illiteracy a worse social crime than hunger.

As I ate she began the first of what we later called “my lessons in living.” She said that I must always be intolerant of ignorance but understanding of illiteracy. That some people, unable to go to school, were more educated and even more intelligent than college professors. She encouraged me to listen carefully to what country people called mother wit. That in those homely sayings was couched the collective wisdom of generations.

I blinked at her, suddenly loathing her to the depths of my soul. Not only was she probably rather evil, and definitely thoroughly unpleasant, but she also didn't read.

In our time, the curse is monetary illiteracy, just as inability to read plain print was the curse of earlier centuries.

To those who care about punctuation, a sentence such as "Thank God its Friday" (without the apostrophe) rouses feelings not only of despair but of violence. The confusion of the possessive "its" (no apostrophe) with the contractive "it's" (with apostrophe) is an unequivocal signal of illiteracy and sets off a Pavlovian "kill" response in the average stickler.

-We need more love, to supersede hatred, -We need more strength, to resist our weaknesses, -We need more inspiration, to lighten up our innermind. -We need more learning, to erase our ignorance, -We need more wisdom, to live longer and happier, -We need more truths, to suppress deceptions, -We need more health, to enjoy our wealth, -We need more peace, to stay in harmony with our brethren -We need more smiles, to brighten up our day, -We need more hero's, and not zero's, -We need more change of ourselves, to change the lives of others, -We need more understanding, to tackle our misunderstanding, -We need more sympathy, not apathy, -We need more forgiveness, not vengeance, -We need more humility to be lifted up, -We need more patience and not undue eagerness, -We need more focus, to avoid distraction, -We need more optimism, not pessimism -We need more justice, not injustice, -We need more facts, not fiction, -We need more education, to curb illiteracy, -We need more skills, not incompetence, -We need more challenges, to make attempts, -We need more talents, to create the extraordinary, -We need more helping hands, not stingy folks, -We need more efforts, not laziness, -We need more jokes, to forget our worries, -We need more spirituality, not mean religion, -We need more freedom, not enslavement, -We need more peacemakers, not revolutionaries...with these, we create an heaven on earth.

It is science alone that can solve the problems of hunger and poverty, of insanitation and illiteracy, of superstition and deadening custom and tradition, of vast resources running to waste, or a rich country inhabited by starving people... Who indeed could afford to ignore science today? At every turn we have to seek its aid... The future belongs to science and those who make friends with science.

I want to read so I can read the Koran read the signs in the street know the number of the bus I'm supposed to take when I one day leave this house.

There is an illiteracy of the soul which no diploma cures.

All over the world there are enormous numbers of smart, even gifted, people who harbor a passion for science. But that passion is unrequited. Surveys suggest that some 95 percent of Americans are “scientifically illiterate.” That’s just the same fraction as those African Americans, almost all of them slaves, who were illiterate just before the Civil War—when severe penalties were in force for anyone who taught a slave to read. Of course there’s a degree of arbitrariness about any determination of illiteracy, whether it applies to language or to science. But anything like 95 percent illiteracy is extremely serious.

You can blame people and situations for your misery, hunger, deprivation and illness, but you are the only person can be blamed for your illiteracy.

Ignorance is a knowledge illiteracy.

Illiteracy is the number one promoter of ignorance.

Illiteracy does not impede the practice of democracy, as witnessed by the success of democracy in India despite the high illiteracy rate. One doesn't need a university diploma to realize that the ruler is oppressive and corrupt. On the other hand, to eradicate illiteracy requires that we elect a fair and efficient political regime.

Always be intolerant of ignorance but understanding of illiteracy.

Illiteracy is dependence. By finding the courage to learn to read and write, Hanna had advanced from dependence to independence, a step towards liberation.

Poverty and illiteracy can be proven as the most lethal factor for the overall development of any nation. These two are strongly interconnected so to counter one; one must deal with the both.

there i was in late middle age, cut loose in a thoroughly looted, bankrupt nation whose assets had been sold off to foreigners, a nation swamped by unchecked plagues and superstition and illiteracy and hypnotic tv, with virtually no health services for the poor. where to go? what to do?

What is progress? You might think that the question is so subjective and culturally relative as to be forever unanswerable. In fact, it’s one of the easier questions to answer. Most people agree that life is better than death. Health is better than sickness. Sustenance is better than hunger. Abundance is better than poverty. Peace is better than war. Safety is better than danger. Freedom is better than tyranny. Equal rights are better than bigotry and discrimination. Literacy is better than illiteracy. Knowledge is better than ignorance. Intelligence is better than dull-wittedness. Happiness is better than misery. Opportunities to enjoy family, friends, culture, and nature are better than drudgery and monotony. All these things can be measured. If they have increased over time, that is progress.

A perceptive French critic has argued that in an age of deepening illiteracy, when even the educated have only a smattering of classical or theological knowledge, erudition is of itself a kind of fantasy, a surrealistic construct.

Ignorance defends itself savagely, and illiteracy, as I well knew, can be shrewd.

Any philosopher, any international economist may talk to me about the methods I have introduced and the thoughts behind them. Illiteracy is a disability only for those who lived their lives walking and talking while their minds slept.

The rich does not work for money, but money work for them...., While the poor work for money.Illiteracy, both in word and numbers, is the foundation of financial struggle....,Wealth is a person's ability to survive so many number of days forward... or if i stopped working today, how could i survive?...,Wealth is the measure of cash flow from to asset column compared with the expense column...,

I steeled myself as best I could, and, with teeth gritted, using only one finger I typed: C U there E. I sat back, feeling a bit queasy. Illiterate communication was quicker, that was true, but not by much. I'd saved myself the trouble of typing four whole characters. Still, it was part of my new credo, trying new things. I'd tried it, and I very definitely did not like it. LOL could go and take a running jump. I wasn't made for illiteracy; it simply didn't come naturally. Although it's good to try new things and to keep an open mind, it's also extremely important to stay true to who you really are. I read that in a magazine at the hairdressers.

Not a thousand years ago, it was illegal to teach a slave to read. Not a thousand years ago, the Supreme Court decided that separate could not be equal. And today, as we sit here, no one is learning anything in this country. You see a nation which is the leader of the rest of the world, that had to pay the price of that ticket, and the price of that ticket is we're sitting in the most illiterate nation in the world. THE MOST ILLITERATE NATION IN THE WORLD. A monument to illiteracy. And if you doubt me, all you have to do is spend a day in Washington. I am serious as a heart attack.

Among evangelicals, high levels of theological illiteracy mean that many “evangelicals” hold views traditionally defined as heresy, calling into question the centrality of theology to evangelicalism generally.

The idea of popular art, like that of a patriotic art, if not actually dangerous seemed to me ridiculous. If the intention was to make art accessible to the people by sacrificing refinements of form, on the ground that they are "all right for the idle rich" but not for anybody else, I had seen enough of fashionable society to know that it is there that one finds real illiteracy and not, let us say, among electricians.

Literacy makes man a victim of advertising. Education makes him a victim of employment.

The donkey heard the book gives wisdom and ate it.

It was vital to free folk from illiteracy, to save those imprisoned by its bondage, she’d said.

In an alleged democracy, the image of the public sphere with its appeal to dialogue and shared responsibility has given way to the spectacle of unbridled intolerance, ignorance, seething private fears, unchecked anger, along with the decoupling of reason from freedom. … What this decline in civility, the emergence of mob behavior …suggests is that we have become one of the most illiterate nations on the planet. I don't mean illiterate in the sense of not being able to read … The new illiteracy is about more than learning how to read the book or the word; it is about learning how not to read the world. … As a result of this widespread illiteracy that has come to dominate American culture we have moved from a culture of questioning to a culture of shouting, and in doing so have restaged politics and power in both unproductive and anti-democratic ways.

First, however, I must deal with the matter of Jesus, the so-called savior, who not long ago taught new doctrines and was thought to be a son of God. This savior, I shall attempt to show, deceived many and caused them to accept a form of belief harmful to the well-being of mankind. Taking its root in the lower classes, the religion continues to spread among the vulgar: nay, one can even say it spreads because of its vulgarity and the illiteracy of its adherents. And while there are a few moderate, reasonable, and intelligent people who interpret its beliefs allegorically, yet it thrives in its purer form among the ignorant.

Further, churches assert their wish to save men from a future hell. Then they should prove their love toward men by helping save the world from today’s hell of illiteracy, hunger, misery, tyranny, exploitation, and war.

We live in a Jesus haunted culture that is Biblically illiterate, and so unfortunately at this point in time, almost anything can pass for knowledge of the historical Jesus from notions that he was a a Cynic sage to ideas that he was a Gnostic guru to fantasies that he didn't exist, to Dan Browne's Jesus of hysterical (rather than historical) fiction.

Illiteracy and stupidity are not quite different statuses; they are both the outcome of our lethargy and indolence.

70 out of 100 people in the world cannot read... if you can read then you are the luckiest out of 2 million people in the world that cannot.

Fiction has two uses. Firstly, it’s a gateway drug to reading. The drive to know what happens next, to want to turn the page, the need to keep going, even if it’s hard, because someone’s in trouble and you have to know how it’s all going to end … that’s a very real drive. And it forces you to learn new words, to think new thoughts, to keep going. To discover that reading per se is pleasurable. Once you learn that, you’re on the road to reading everything. And reading is key. There were noises made briefly, a few years ago, about the idea that we were living in a post-literate world, in which the ability to make sense out of written words was somehow redundant, but those days are gone: words are more important than they ever were: we navigate the world with words, and as the world slips onto the web, we need to follow, to communicate and to comprehend what we are reading. People who cannot understand each other cannot exchange ideas, cannot communicate, and translation programs only go so far. The simplest way to make sure that we raise literate children is to teach them to read, and to show them that reading is a pleasurable activity. And that means, at its simplest, finding books that they enjoy, giving them access to those books, and letting them read them. I don’t think there is such a thing as a bad book for children. Every now and again it becomes fashionable among some adults to point at a subset of children’s books, a genre, perhaps, or an author, and to declare them bad books, books that children should be stopped from reading. I’ve seen it happen over and over; Enid Blyton was declared a bad author, so was RL Stine, so were dozens of others. Comics have been decried as fostering illiteracy. It’s tosh. It’s snobbery and it’s foolishness. There are no bad authors for children, that children like and want to read and seek out, because every child is different. They can find the stories they need to, and they bring themselves to stories. A hackneyed, worn-out idea isn’t hackneyed and worn out to them. This is the first time the child has encountered it. Do not discourage children from reading because you feel they are reading the wrong thing. Fiction you do not like is a route to other books you may prefer. And not everyone has the same taste as you. Well-meaning adults can easily destroy a child’s love of reading: stop them reading what they enjoy, or give them worthy-but-dull books that you like, the 21st-century equivalents of Victorian “improving” literature. You’ll wind up with a generation convinced that reading is uncool and worse, unpleasant. We need our children to get onto the reading ladder: anything that they enjoy reading will move them up, rung by rung, into literacy. [from, Why our future depends on libraries, reading and daydreaming]

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 three stories a day to the children in their lives ,we would probably wipe out illiteracy in one generation" Reading Magic Mem Fox

The nuclear weapons on board just one of our Trident submarines contain eight times the firepower expended in all of World War II.

If literacy was natural, the word ‘illiteracy’ would not exist.

Illiterate people should only be charged for the photographs; when buying a newspaper.

Fundamentalism - of any variety - is a form of illiteracy, in that it asserts that it is necessary to read only one book.

I must always be intolerant of ignorance but understanding of illiteracy.

I hope that as a totally literate human being that you don't even know what "illiteracy" is because it simply doesn't exist in your world.

Ignorance is Illiteracy.

Illiteracy is not only if you didn’t go to school. Illiteracy is when the lecturer teach you and you didn’t understand his formula of teaching. That’s also an illiterate

It didn’t matter then, anyway. Elyssa had about as much use for books as a cat has for a riding crop. But now …” Tyler heard the Mace’s unspoken thought easily. Queen Elyssa may not have cared about illiteracy, but Queen Kelsea would care, very much. “But the Queen would never kick you out of the Guard.” “Of course she wouldn’t. I just don’t want her to know.

Baltimore's slogan was 'The City that Reads', but like the rest of its one million or so inhabitants Lori knew that was a pipedream; the city had one of the lowest literacy rates in the country, and along with illiteracy went a lack of morals.

I will go home and much of what I will have to say will seem strange to the people of my village... But I will teach and work and things will happen, slowly and swiftly. At times it will seem that nothing changes at all... and then again... the sudden dramatic events which make history leap into the future. And then quiet again. Retrogression even. Guns, murder, revolution. And I even will have moments when I wonder if the quiet was not better than all that death and hatred. But I will look about my village at the illiteracy and disease and ignorance and will not wonder long. And perhaps... perhaps I will be a great man... I mean perhaps I will hold on to the substance of truth and find my way always with the right course... and perhaps for it I will be butchered in my bed some night by the servants of empire... ...perhaps the things I believe now for my country will be wrong and outmoded, and I will not understand and do terrible things to have things my way or merely to keep my power. Don't you see that there will be young men and women, not British soldiers then, but my own black countrymen... to step out of the shadows some evening and slit my then useless throat? Don't you see they have always been there... that they always will be. And that such a thing as my own death will be an advance? They who might kill me even... actually replenish me!

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

This book (Jarod Kintz's book) is trash. I mean, I assume it is, because that's where I found it while scrounging for lunch. However, I must admit that I haven't read it. I would have, but I am homeless, mainly due to my illiteracy (though Big Government, Keynesian monetary policy, and my struggle with alcoholism certainly played a large role).

Modern war, modern international hostility is, I believe, possible only through the stupid illiteracy of the mass of men and the conceit and intellectual indolence of rulers and those who feed the public mind.

But Christian illiteracy is only the first part of the crisis. Even more seriously, even for those who think they speak “Christian” fluently, the faith itself is often misunderstood and distorted by many to whom it is seemingly very familiar. They think they are speaking the language as it has always been understood, but what they mean by the words and concepts is so different from what these things have meant historically, that they would have trouble communicating with the very authors of the past they honor.

A good many times I have been present at gatherings of people who, by the standards of the traditional culture, are thought highly educated and who have with considerable gusto been expressing their incredulity at the illiteracy of scientists. Once or twice I have been provoked and have asked the company how many of them could describe the Second Law of Thermodynamics. The response was cold: it was also negative. Yet I was asking something which is about the scientific equivalent of: Have you read a work of Shakespeare's?

. . . it is called 'camel case' or 'intercapping' -- of writing small letters next to large in the same word, as in such popular significations as iPod, eBay, iTunes, etc. which few would argue is a distinct sign of illiteracy.

The thing is very clear to us that behind every person or family, who or which is going through a difficulty, you say any kind of challenge in life then there are some obvious reasons behind the story – whether it’s poverty, illiteracy, addiction, abuse, unemployment, disability, mental illness, discrimination or anything else like that. So, for all these adverse situations, a social worker.

People used to think that learning to read evidenced human progress; they still celebrate the decline of illiteracy as a great victory; they condemn countries with a large proportion of illiterates; they think that reading is a road to freedom. All this is debatable, for the important thing is not to be able to read, but to understand what one reads, to reflect on and judge what one reads. Outside of that, reading has no meaning (and even destroys certain automatic qualities of memory and observation). But to talk about critical faculties and discernment is to talk about something far above primary education and to consider a very small minority. The vast majority of people, perhaps 90 percent, know how to read, but do not exercise their intelligence beyond this. They attribute authority and eminent value to the printed word, or, conversely, reject it altogether. As these people do not possess enough knowledge to reflect and discern, they believe—or disbelieve—in toto what they read. And as such people, moreover, will select the easiest, not the hardest, reading matter, they are precisely on the level at which the printed word can seize and convince them without opposition. They are perfectly adapted to propaganda.

The smallest world on earth is that which is created by a closed mind.

Those who read only books that only entertain them have no significant advantage over those who can but do not read.

Most people agree that life is better than death. Health is better than sickness. Sustenance is better than hunger. Abundance is better than poverty. Peace is better than war. Safety is better than danger. Freedom is better than tyranny. Equal rights are better than bigotry and discrimination. Literacy is better than illiteracy. Knowledge is better than ignorance. Intelligence is better than dull-wittedness. Happiness is better than misery. Opportunities to enjoy family, friends, culture, and nature are better than drudgery and monotony. All these things can be measured. If they have

As I ate she began the first of what was later called “my lessons in living.” She said that I must always be intolerant of ignorance but understanding of illiteracy. That some people, unable to go to school, were more educated and even more intelligent than college professors. She encouraged me to listen carefully to what country people called mother wit. That in those homely sayings was couched the collective wisdom of generations.

Kuna tofauti kati ya hekima na maarifa. Unaweza kuwa profesa ukawa mpumbavu, unaweza kuwa gumbaru ukawa na hekima.

To witness the awe of human beings delighting in their own hands forming the written word was humbling and he understood it profoundly at that moment watching those two, with the ancient land around them, in their traditional robes and the resting camels by their campfire, intently regarding writing with such immense respect … that illiteracy meant subsistence, while literacy meant human advancement, the base on which higher achievements and accomplishments of great civilizations could be built.

He was able to prove that the South had surrendered ninety-seven million acres to erosion (an area larger than the two Carolinas and Georgia); it had squandered the chances of millions of people by tolerating poverty and illiteracy; and it had ignored human potential by refusing to provide technological training, or even basic services, to its people. The overwhelming power of Odum’s data undercut (what Odum himself called) Gone with the Wind nostalgia—the collective self-image elite southerners had cultivated.

She told Everra that he had given her and Sallo the soul's hunger for books and thoughts, and must not deprive them now that Sallo was starving among the inanities of the silk rooms and she among the pomposities of merchants and the illiteracy of politicians.

For example, knowing that it takes only about eleven and a half days for a million seconds to tick away, whereas almost thirty-two years are required for a billion seconds to pass, gives one a better grasp of the relative magnitudes of these two common numbers.

Intellectual cowardice is only one of the problems of the academic community. Fort rubbed their noses in the swill generated by their gibberish and illiteracy. It was no secret then or now that academic publications are designed to protect the inept and to conceal ignorance. People with nothing to say, who even lack the ability to say nothing, can hide behind the academic method for a lifetime.

...And another item from the growing file of people who voluntarily wear dunce caps... You'll be talking cordially to someone and make an offhand reference, 'I recently read where--' and they'll cut you off and say, 'Oh, I don't read'... This is a tragedy on so many different levels. First, because they don't read, they don't know enough to keep it to themselves. Next, and this is the most amazing part, they use a demeaning tone like I'm the stupid one for wasting time with books.

Did you know that seventy-five to eighty percent of juvenile offenders can’t read at grade level?” “Really?” This was news to me. “Your world becomes a much smaller place if you can’t read. You have far fewer options. It’s not the only factor, but it’s a big one. If they want to know how big to build a prison, all they have to do is look at the illiteracy statistics.” “They knew I was coming.” “You or someone like you.” “You knew it too, all those years ago, back in Quincy. That’s why you tried to help me. Because you knew I was coming here.” “Here or someplace like here.

Many people today think that the Tea Act—which led to the Boston Tea Party—was simply an increase in the taxes on tea paid by the American colonists. That's where the whole "Taxation Without Representation" meme came from. Instead, the purpose of the Tea Act was to give the East India Company full and unlimited access to the American tea trade and to exempt the company from having to pay taxes to Britain on tea exported to the American colonies. It even gave the company a tax refund on millions of pounds of tea that it was unable to sell and holding in inventory. In other words, the Tea Act was the largest corporate tax break in the history of the world.

Illiterate communication was quicker, that was true, but not by much. I’d saved myself the trouble of typing four whole characters. Still, it was part of my new credo, trying new things. I’d tried it, and I very definitely did not like it. LOL could go and take a running jump. I wasn’t made for illiteracy; it simply didn’t come naturally. Although it’s good to try new things and to keep an open mind, it’s also extremely important to stay true to who you really are. I read that in a magazine at the hairdressers.

A good many times I have been present at gatherings of people who, by the standards of the traditional culture, are thought highly educated and who have with considerable gusto been expressing their incredulity at the illiteracy of scientists. Once or twice I have been provoked and have asked the company how many of them could describe the Second Law of Thermodynamics. The response was cold: it was also negative. Yet I was asking something which is about the scientific equivalent of: “Have you read a work of Shakespeare’s?” Despite

جہالت خُدا سے دوری کا ایک بڑا سبب ہے

I don’t think I’d have wanted to be around during a dark age. It’s odd, though. They had interstellar flight. And data retrieval and everything.” Gabe nodded. “None of it matters if you have an unstable society and tin-pot dictators. They had several hundred years of economic collapse. Widespread poverty. A few people at the top had all the money and influence. They had terrible overpopulation, struggles over water and resources. Civil wars. And widespread illiteracy.” The thirty-second to the thirty-ninth century. “It’s a wonder we survived.

For out of this modern civilization economic royalists carved new dynasties. New kingdoms were built upon concentration of control over material things. Through new uses of corporations, banks and securities, new machinery of industry and agriculture, of labor and capital—all undreamed of by the fathers—the whole structure of modern life was impressed into this royal service. There was no place among this royalty for our many thousands of small business men and merchants who sought to make a worthy use of the American system of initiative and profit. They were no more free than the worker or the farmer. Even honest and progressive-minded men of wealth, aware of their obligation to their generation, could never know just where they fitted into this dynastic scheme of things. It was natural and perhaps human that the privileged princes of these new economic dynasties, thirsting for power, reached out for control over Government itself. They created a new despotism and wrapped it in the robes of legal sanction. In its service new mercenaries sought to regiment the people, their labor, and their property.

First, take a deep breath. Assume Shakespeare’s account is accurate and Julius Caesar gasped “You too, Brutus” before breathing his last. What are the chances you just inhaled a molecule which Caesar exhaled in his dying breath? The surprising answer is that, with probability better than 99 percent, you did just inhale such a molecule.

Where truth rises ignorance falls. Where certainty rises speculation falls. Where pleasure rises pain falls. Where joy rises grief falls. Where love rises fear falls. Where modesty rises ego falls. Where tolerance rises injustice falls. Where mercy rises vengance falls. Where integrity rises distrust falls. Where justice rises crime falls. Where equality rises abuse falls. Where freedom rises slavery falls. Where wealth rises poverty falls. Where knowledge rises illiteracy falls. Where wisdom rises dullness falls. Where harmoney rises anarchy falls. Where peace rises turmoil falls. Where order rises chaos falls. Where faith rises doubt falls. Where light rises darkness falls. Where good rises evil falls. Where strength rises weakness falls.

the consequences of scientific illiteracy are far more dangerous in our time than in any that has come before. It’s perilous and foolhardy for the average citizen to remain ignorant about global warming, say, or ozone depletion, air pollution, toxic and radioactive wastes, acid rain, topsoil erosion, tropical deforestation, exponential population growth. Jobs and wages depend on science and technology. If our nation can’t manufacture, at high quality and low price, products people want to buy, then industries will continue to drift away and transfer a little more prosperity to other parts of the world. Consider the social ramifications of fission and fusion power, supercomputers, data “highways,” abortion, radon, massive reductions in strategic weapons, addiction, government eavesdropping on the lives of its citizens, high-resolution TV, airline and airport safety, fetal tissue transplants, health costs, food additives, drugs to ameliorate mania or depression or schizophrenia, animal rights, superconductivity, morning-after pills, alleged hereditary antisocial predispositions, space stations, going to Mars, finding cures for AIDS and cancer. How can we affect national policy—or even make intelligent decisions in our own lives—if we don’t grasp the underlying issues?

There was one panicked moment. He picked a book from the wall, and the shapes inside, all the letters, were friends to him; but as he settled before them and began to mouth and mutter them, waiting for them to sound as words in his head, they were all gibberish. He grew frantic very quickly, fearing that he had lost what it was he had gained.t pieced it together into a different language. Shekel was dumbstruck at the realization that these glyphs he had conquered could do the same job for so many peoples who could not understand each other at all. He grinned as he thought about it. He was glad to share. He opened more foreign volumes, making or trying to make the noises that the letters spelled and laughing at how strange they sounded. He looked carefully at the pictures and cross-referenced them again, tentatively he concluded that in this lanugage, this particular clutch of letters meant 'boat' and this other set 'moon'. ....he reached new shelving and opened a book whose script was like nothing he knew. He laughed, delighted at its strange curves. He moved off further and found yet another alphabet. And a little way off there was another. For hours he found intrigue and astonishment by exploring the non-Ragamoll shelves. He found in those meaningless words and illegible alphabets not only an awe at the world, but the remnants of the fetishism to which he had been subjected before, when all books had existed for him as those did now, only as mute objects with mass and dimension and color, but without content. .... He gazedc at the books in Base and High Kettai and Sunglari and Lubbock and Khadohi with a kind of fascinated nostalgia for his own illiteracy, without for a fraction of a moment missing it.