Ben Sasse Quotes

Where the press is free and every man able to read, all is safe.

Reading and writing, like everything else, improve with practice. And, of course, if there are no young readers and writers, there will shortly be no older ones. Literacy will be dead, and democracy - which many believe goes hand in hand with it - will be dead as well.

Most people associate reading with laying on the beach. They don't see that it's crucial for a democracy!

Widespread public access to knowledge, like public education, is one of the pillars of our democracy, a guarantee that we can maintain a well-informed citizenry.

Education is a better safeguard of liberty than a standing army.

Let us tenderly and kindly cherish, therefore, the means of knowledge. Let us dare to read, think, speak, and write.

If you know how to read, you have a complete education about life, then you know how to vote within a democracy. But if you don't know how to read, you don't know how to decide. That's the great thing about our country - we're a democracy of readers, and we should keep it that way.

Without an educated populace, democracy cannot sustain itself.

Whenever the people are well-informed, they can be trusted with their own government.

A well-instructed people alone can be permanently a free people.

Reading builds the educated and informed electorate so vital to our democracy.

Next in importance to freedom and justice is popular education, without which neither justice nor freedom can be permanently maintained.

A popular government, without popular information, or the means of acquiring it is but a prologue to a farce or a tragedy; or perhaps both ... And a people who mean to be their own governors, must arm themselves with the power that knowledge gives.

Let us by all wise and constitutional measures promote intelligence among the people as the best means of preserving our liberties.

I am not so much concerned with the right of everyone to say anything he pleases as I am about our need as a self-governing people to hear everything relevant

Without education, you can’t have democracy.

Liberty cannot be preserved without general knowledge among people.

We cannot sustain growth without trained manpower; not our democratic system of government, for freedom is fragile if citizens are ignorant.

It is necessary that all our people be instructed, as universal education is the main pillar that must eventually support the temple of liberty.

The vitality of democracy depends on popular knowledge of complex questions.

A democracy depends on its people, the literate and the well read.

Books are key to understanding the world and participating in a democratic society.

In a democracy, we have always had to worry about the ignorance of the uneducated. Today we have to worry about the ignorance of people with college degrees.

What is really needed to make democracy function is not knowledge of facts, but right education.

We... are not really free if we can't control our own government and its policies. And we will never do that if we remain ignorant.