QUOTES OF THE DAY 9-4-13

“There is more than one way to burn a book.”

“You don’t have to burn books to destroy a culture. Just get people to stop reading them.”

“Every minority, be it Baptist/Unitarian, Irish/Italian/Octogenarian/Zen Buddhist, Zionist/Seventh-day Adventist, Women’s Lib/Republican, Mattachine/Four Square Gospel feels it has the will, the right, the duty to douse the kerosene, light the fuse. Every dimwit editor who sees himself as the source of all dreary blanc-mange plain porridge unleavened literature, licks his guillotine and eyes the neck of any author who dares to speak above a whisper or write above a nursery rhyme.” (“Coda” 1979)
“The main problem is with our education, of course. First-grade teachers for many years now have not been teaching reading and we have to encourage them to pull up their socks and begin to pay attention so that the whole school system doesn’t go to hell. People are getting into high school who can’t read. It’s stupid, isn’t it? It’s crazy.”
“The jails are full of one million non-readers. We can’t let it happen again. If you allow another generation to grow up to be 12 years old…. without the ability to read, write, and think, we’re sunk. If they can’t read, if they can’t write, if they can’t think, they become criminals. We’ve already lost two generations. Unless we teach reading intensely and completely in kindergarten and first grade, the whole civilization goes to hell.”

“With computers, kids can connect and search libraries and the Encyclopedia Britannica, but if you don’t teach them to read in the first place, they’re not going to [log on], are they?” (Speech to National School Board Association, 1995)

“If you hide your ignorance, no one will hit you and you’ll never learn.” (Faber in Fahrenheit 451)

Ray Bradbury