#literacy

When a reader enters the pages of a book of poetry, he or she enters a world where dreams transform the past into knowledge made applicable to the present, and where visions shape the present into extraordinary possibilities for the future. ↗

— Aberjhani

#dreams #famous-authors #famous-poets #literacy #national-poetry-month

They are a testament not only to the Afghans' hunger for literacy, but also to their willingness to pour scarce resources into this effort, even during a time of war. I have seen children studying in classrooms set up inside animal sheds, windowless basements, garages, and even an abandoned public toilet. We ourselves have run schools out of refugee tents, shipping containers, and the shells of bombed-out Soviet armored personnel carriers. The thirst for education over there is limitless. The Afghans want their children to go to school because literacy represents what neither we not anyone else has so far managed to offer them: hope, progress, and the possibility of controlling their own destiny. ↗

— Greg Mortenson

#education

I want to be a creature that’s half bee, half the letter B. That way I can pollinate the world with my literacy. ↗

— Jarod Kintz

#letter-b #literacy #world #funny

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. ↗

— Carl Sagan

#literacy #science #social-conditions #education

Just a thought. What sets us above all other life on this planet is our ability to read. What we read can determine our relationship with all other life on this planet. ↗

— M.J. Croan

#life

He switched off the light, came back and sat in the chair. In the darkness, Liesel kept her eyes open. She was watching the words. ↗

— Markus Zusak

#learning #learning-to-read #literacy #love #love

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

— Elbert Hubbard

#illiteracy #reading #money

As long as you have any floor space at all, you have room for books! Just make two stacks of books the same height, place them three or four feet apart, lay a board across them, and repeat. Viola! Bookshelves! ↗

— Jan Karon

#books #literacy #reading #space

It wasn't raindrops at all. It was a great solid mass of water that might have been a lake or a whole ocean dropping out of the sky on top of them, and down it came, down and down and down, crashing first onto the seagulls and then onto the peach itself, while the poor travelers shrieked with fear and groped around frantically for something to catch hold of- the peach stem, the silk strings, anything they could find- and all the time the water came pouring and roaring down upon them, bouncing and smashing and sloshing and slashing and swashing and swirling and surging and whirling and gurgling and gushing and rushing and rushing, and it was like being pinned down underneath the biggest waterfall in the world and not being able to get out. ↗

— Roald Dahl

#humor #literacy #humor

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. ↗

— Ben Witherington III

#jesus #historical-fiction