Ann Druyan Quotes

The more research you do, the more at ease you are in the world you're writing about. It doesn't encumber you, it makes you free.

to know how to read is to light a lamp in the mind, to release the soul from prison, to open a gate to the universe." from Pavilion of Women page 292

We cannot change anything until we accept it. Condemnation does not liberate, it oppresses.

It is not the simple statement of facts that ushers in freedom; it is the constant repetition of them that has this liberating effect. Tolerance is the result not of enlightenment, but of boredom.

To free a person from error is to give, and not to take away.

Freedom can occur only through education.

Give people knowledge and they really eat it up and they appreciate it a lot and the more that knowledge is made available to people, the more they will utilize it and let it be a part of them.

The whole world opened to me when I learned to read.

Rights are useless unless the possessor knows about them.

Knowledge is the only fountain both of love and the principles of human liberty.

There is always room for understanding towards those who see the old ways crumbling. And today I say simply this: It must come. It is right that it should come. And when it does, you will find that a burden has been lifted from your shoulders too.

The more you know of your history, the more liberated you are.

Education can become a self-fulfilling activity, liberating in and of itself.

I dropped out of school, but I didn't drop out of life. I would leave the house each morning and go to the main branch of the Carnegie Library in Oakland where they had all the books in the world... I felt suddenly liberated from the constraints of a pre-arranged curriculum that labored through one book in eight months.

It is so sad that it takes so long for people to understand what needs to happen in order to be free.

In so many ways, segregation shaped me, and education liberated me.

You will learn most things by looking, but reading gives understanding. Reading will make you free.

The freedom of knowing that you're doing something off-kilter is liberating.

It is not enough to demand insight and informative images of reality from the theater. Our theater must stimulate a desire for understanding, a delight in changing reality. Our audience must experience not only the ways to free Prometheus, but be schooled in the very desire to free him. Theater must teach all the pleasures and joys of discovery, all the feelings of triumph associated with liberation.

It gave a tremendous level of self-confidence, that through exploration and learning one could understand seemingly very complex things in one's environment.

The enemies of a people are those who keep them in ignorance.

Knowing the cause of something is not going to help you to be free of it.

I think books can give rise to empowerment.

Knowledge always liberates.

An airplane stands for freedom, for joy, for the power to understand, and to demonstrate that understanding.