Mitch Albom Quotes

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 wouldn't be a very good writer if someone hadn't taught me how to read.

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

So many organizations have a mentoring arm, but they don't really do it. Their idea of mentoring a kid is giving them general advice. But what they need to do is read with children.

The ratio of literacy to illiteracy is constant, but nowadays the illiterates can read and write.

President Bush said that our kids must be taught how to read. He said if his aides never learned to read, they'd never be able to tell him what's in the newspapers every day.

You know, it's been proven that 35 to 40 hours a year with one-on-one attention, a student can get one grade level higher.

Parents should be encouraged to read to their children, and teachers should be equipped with all available techniques for teaching literacy, so the varying needs and capacities of individual kids can be taken into account.

My dad's passion was to teach adults to read so they could read to their kids.

I teach for the Book Trust, which promotes reading and writing with children.

I'm quite illiterate, but I read a lot.

The policy of rewarding those who learn to read and write by giving them a chance to vote remain in operation in New England for many years as an influence tending to reduce illiteracy

We should keep faithfully the pledges we have given not to increase taxation, but this should not deter us from making every effort to rid our State of the disgrace of its illiteracy

Our scholastic system isn't structured to make sure that kids in the fifth or sixth grades absolutely know how to read.

We are the worst of fools if we do not teach every child to become truly expert, deep readers.

I'm literate, and the idea of leaving children illiterate is criminal.

There is very little difference between one who cannot read and one who will not read.

Illiteracy is a huge problem in America. One in three adults in our country is illiterate.

When you learn to read you will be born again...and you will never be quite so alone again.

I hope someday we can stamp out illiteracy in America. Of course you'll have to kill alot of my relatives to do it.

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

We've got a great percentage of our population that, to our great shame, either cannot or, equally unfortunate, will not read. And that portion of our public is growing. Those people are suckers for the demagogue.

Learn to be good readers, which is perhaps a more difficult thing than you imagine. Learn to be discriminative in your reading; to read faithfully, and with your best attention, all kinds of things which you have a real interest in,--a real, not an imaginary,--and which you find to be really fit for what you are engaged in.

You don't have to care about children to care about children. One of the things that I talk a lot about is the fact of the importance of third-grade reading level. By the end of third grade, if the child is not at reading level, it'll drop off. They never catch up.

I have a passion for teaching kids to become readers, to become comfortable with a book, not daunted. Books shouldn't be daunting, they should be funny, exciting and wonderful; and learning to be a reader gives a terrific advantage.