Russell Banks Quotes

To read is to have experiences; every book changes my life at least a little bit. The first time I can remember this happening was when I was 10, with a biography of Thomas Edison.

Though he was not a reader himself, my father understood that reading is not just an escape. It is access to a better way of life.

Education is freedom.

Reading is power. Reading is life.

The greatest gift is a passion for reading. It is cheap, it consoles, it distracts, it excites, it gives you knowledge of the world and experience of a wide kind. It is a moral illumination.

Without education, you’re not you and I’m not me.

I do believe that books can change lives and give people this kind of language they wouldn't have had otherwise.

Growing up in the inner city, a lot of kids didn't think reading was cool. I'm trying to show them that it is cool and the importance of growing and learning outside of their everyday lives, which is a lot of times sports.

My mom was big on education, big on reading, so she was always pushing books on me: 'The Autobiography of Malcolm X,' like, 'Read these books.' And it was like, man, I'm learning stuff that I just can't get anywhere else.

It is important to be well read, at least a little bit.

School gives you the freedom to explore different philosophies, religions, aspects of yourself, and subjects.

An educated person is one who, through the travail of his own life, has assimilated the ideas that make him representative of his culture.

The progress of the world depends almost entirely upon education.

Education was the most important value in our home when I was growing up. People don't always realize that my parents shared a sense of intellectual curiosity and a love of reading and of history.

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.

Libraries are where we learn that we can live our lives through books.

Everybody agrees that whatever the solutions are to the big problems, they... can never be without some element of education.

Books stay with me and have shaped me and made huge impacts on my life.

Education remains the key to both economic and political empowerment.

If you can't read, the only thing you can do is enjoy the pictures, not the whole story. Reading is the key to knowledge. Knowledge is the key to understanding. So read on, young man! Read on, young lady!

Ever read a book that changed your life? Me neither.

The key to education is the experience of beauty.

There are many problems, but I think there is a solution to all these problems; it's just one, and it's education.

People who don't read seem to me mysterious. I don't know how they think or learn about other people. Novels are a very important part of our education.

The only medicine for suffering, crime, and all other woes of mankind, is wisdom. Teach a man to read and write, and you have put into his hands the great keys of the wisdom box. But it is quite another thing to open the box.