Ray Bradbury Quotes

Without education, you can’t have democracy.

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

We Americans have the great gifts of freedom and democracy, but it has been our education system that has fulfilled the promise of democracy.

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

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

Decision making in a democracy depends above all on knowledge and not just the intel available to presidents and policymakers.

Democracy cannot succeed unless those who express their choice are prepared to choose wisely. The real safeguard of democracy, therefore, is education.

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.

Without an educated populace, democracy cannot sustain itself.

In my opinion, right up there with free public schools, our free public library system is what makes citizenship possible, even what makes America great.

I always tell my students: I don't care which side you're on. I respect you too much to try to persuade you in 120 minutes a week, much less lure you into pretending that you agree with me. All I want is for you to own this democracy, to see yours, to have a stake in it.

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

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

With a library you are free, not confined by temporary political climates. It is the most democratic of institutions because no one — but no one at all — can tell you what to read and when and how.

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

Education, then, as universally diffused as the elements of God, is the life-blood of our body politic. The intelligence of the people is the one great fact of our civilization and our prosperity, — it is the beating heart of our age and of our land. It is education alone which makes equality possible without anarchy, and liberty without license.

Democracy depends on well educated and engaged citizens.

Not less, but more democracy - that is the demand, that is the great goal that we have to prescribe for ourselves, and especially for our youth.

Education to me is the most important thing that we've got going in this country. I mean, a lot of my family are teachers. I was the recipient of a great public education, and I see that's one of the first things that we're going to go, 'What are we going to raise?' The ignorant masses.

Democracy is not just voting for your leaders; it's really premised upon ordinary citizens understanding the issues.

Let the people decide whom to vote for, who has more authority. And only people, only our citizens, are able to place the final emphasis, voting for this or that person or political force, or rejecting it. That's democracy.

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

A State which has universal suffrage and a wide extension of the jury franchise, must qualify the people by education to rightly exercise the great powers with which they are invested.

Men of power have no time to read; yet the men who do not read are unfit for power.

A better educated electorate might change the reason many persons vote.