David Baldacci Quotes

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

Democracy depends on well educated and engaged citizens.

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.

If information and knowledge are central to democracy, they are conditions for development.

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.

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

Without education, you can’t have democracy.

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.

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.

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.

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.

The man who does not read good books has no advantage over the man who cannot read them.

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

You can't be a full participant in our democracy if you don't know our history.

Man is what he reads.

The role of the teacher remains the highest calling of a free people. To the teacher, America entrusts her most precious resource, her children; and asks that they be prepared... to face the rigors of individual participation in a democratic society.

Education is not just another consumer item. It is the bedrock of our democracy.

No one more sincerely wishes the spread of information among mankind than I do, and none has greater confidence in its effect upwards, supporting free and good government.

Liberty cannot be preserved without general knowledge among people.

Whatever the cost of our libraries is, it is cheap compared to the cost of an ignorant nation.

What our children become, so becomes our nation. It is plain common sense to give our children the best education possible so that they can develop into productive responsible citizens contributing economically, socially and politically to our democratic society.

I don't think that our Founders would believe that America could long prosper if the people were not readers.

Education is important even beyond the bounds of the opportunities it gives to the individual; it is a crucial and basic requirement for ensuring effective democracy and human rights.