John D. MacDonald Quotes

Johnny can get down and Johnny can throw up, but Johnny can't read.

Eunice Parchman killed the Coverdale family because she could not read or write.

Too many of our children cannot read. Reading is the building block, and it must be the foundation for education reform.

I didn't learn how to read until I was at the end of fifth grade and 11 years old and held back.

People never notice anything.

There is a crisis involving reading in certain communities.

Ignorance is the primary source of all misery and vice.

It's appropriate that the word 'ignorance' is an extension of the word 'ignore.' We ignore so much and so we become ignore-ant.

To keep a person ignorant is to place them in a cage.

When ignorance gets started it knows no bounds.

There will always be non-readers, bad readers, lazy readers - there always were.

I might show facts as plain as day: but, since your eyes are blind, you'd say, 'Where? What?' and turn away.

I can have incredible self-discipline. But see, I think it's obviously a form of stupidity.

I didn't read at all until I was 12. I just couldn't. It was too frustrating.

I had learning problems when I was in elementary school, and didn't really start to read well until high school. I never read any of the middle grade classics that were popular when I was young - 'Harriet the Spy', 'Charlotte's Web', 'The Witch of Blackbird Pond', 'Charlie and the Chocolate Factory'.

I hadn't learned to read by third grade, which wasn't unusual for some kids. I knew something was wrong because I couldn't see or understand the words the way the other kids did. I wasn't the least bit bothered - until I was sent back to the second-grade classroom for reading help after school.

Ignorance, the root and stem of all evil.

To be ignorant of one's ignorance is the malady of the ignorant.

Ignorance breeds fear.

Ignorance is not bliss. It is oblivion.

Out of sight, out of mind.

From ignorance our comfort flows.

One of the things that amazes me is the amount of functional illiteracy in this country... people can't read to get around, or people who can't read the newspaper but can barely read street signs.

I think for me I was in kindergarten, so I was very young and my teacher acknowledged that I was very dyslexic when it came to reading and writing and processing that information.

There's an enormous amount of obliviousness: a desire among young gentrifiers to see only the city they want to see.