Alfred Quotes

It's an insane tragedy that 700,000 people get a diploma each year and can't read the damned diploma.

Illiteracy is rampant. People are out of communication.

All the youth ..., who are rich enough to be able to devote themselves to it be set to learn ... until they are able to read English writing well.

Eighty-five percent cannot read when they enter the security forces of Afghanistan. Why? Because the Taliban withheld education during the period of time in which these men and women would have learned to read.

I failed world geography, civics, Spanish and English. And when you fail Spanish and English, they do not consider you bilingual. They may call you bi-ignorant because you can't speak any language.

Sometimes, reading a blog, which I do infrequently, I see that generations of Americans have been wilfully crippled, and can no longer spell or write a sentence.

I'm a professor of comparative literature, among other things, so I'm able to read in a couple of other languages, and I understand that not everyone is, not everyone can, although it is quite stunning how many people do read Spanish in the United States, but moving between languages is also extremely helpful.

There are so many people in the world who cannot read English or French or whatever.

There's been an unquestionable decline in American culture. The education system is thin on the ground. People don't read as deeply and at length as they used to. And the media has been scattered into so many cable channels.

If a child cannot speak English the first day at school, that child is not ready to learn.

… a barbarian who could not write one sentence of grammar.

Learning will be cast into the mire, and trodden down under the hoofs of a swinish multitude.

There is no excuse for letting another generation be as vastly ignorant, or as devoid of understanding … as we are ourselves.

Russian literacy in the early twentieth century remained below 33 percent—lower than that of Great Britain in the eighteenth century.

Those who do not read have no advantage over those who cannot read.

I was so fortunate to be raised in a household filled with books and - as you might imagine to be the case in the Bush home - plenty of conversation.

It is not easy, but young people have to learn languages.

The first thing I remember when I moved to a school in the suburbs was, 'My gosh, all these books!' The classroom and school had a library; I'd never seen so many books in my life! It was something we didn't have in the township.

It is very difficult to work in another language, and it is also very challenging.

It has to be said that one of the most impressive aspects of the parliament are the brilliant unsung translators, who ensure that whatever language you speak, you are understood.

I would always read a lot.

Kids who read are bright.

I think if a youngster leaves school unable to read you're kind of condemning them to a life of poverty and a life of lack of potential.

I learned reading and writing from my mother.

It's amazing, the number of people who don't have passports, who can't read, who can't write. It's sick actually. It's disgusting.