Northrop Frye Quotes

If we look at Houston, which is a very environmentally toxic place, we find that it has one of the highest levels of young men going to prison and also among the highest levels of illiteracy in the country.

Many who resort to crime ultimately can't read or write.

Human progress lags most in societies in which illiteracy is highest, above all in Islamic countries and Africa.

People see poverty all around them in India, but they are desensitized or immune to it. I came to the conclusion that poverty is driven by lack of education.

I understand human needs. I grew up where far too many people lived day to day without elemental needs like food and shelter.

Hungry people cannot be good at learning or producing anything, except perhaps violence.

A considerable share of the world's population still cannot afford comfortable housing, education and quality health care.

When children do not have three square meals a day, a proper education, and at least one adult who they know loves and is committed to them, it's very unlikely they will grow up to be productive citizens of the world.

There is a triangular relationship between poverty, child labour and illiteracy who have a cause and consequence relationship. We will have to break this vicious circle.

A country so rich that it can send people to the moon still has hundreds of thousands of its citizens who can't read. That's terribly troubling to me.

What we have found in this country, and maybe we're more aware of it now, is one problem that we've had, even in the best of times, and that is the people who are sleeping on the grates, the homeless, you might say, by choice.

The majority of people in Angola were not provided with any kind of schooling and were completely illiterate, very badly paid, and treated almost as slaves.

My early childhood prepared me to be a social psychologist. I grew up in a South Bronx ghetto in a very poor family. From Sicilian origin, I was the first person in my family to complete high school, let alone go to college.

The purposeful restriction of knowledge has been at the heart of untold misery and hardship in this world. Serfs were kept illiterate so as to not jeopardize the feudal system. Slaves were kept in the dark on a variety of subjects so as to not provide them the possibility of escape.

My father was a civil servant in northern India where I was born. As a boy I saw the dire effects of poverty and illiteracy, especially on women and children. It often seemed that the only thing separating me from them was luck.

It was a slow understanding that the lack of education in a country like Somalia creates these huge social problems.

I can't read, I don't know how to write, my whole life has been one big fight.

The people are starving. They need food; they need medicine; they need education. They do not need a skyscraper to house the ruling party and a 24-hour TV station.

Ignorant and illiterate people cannot understand democracy. They are prey to religious extremists.

It's hard for people who have never faced hunger or illiteracy to understand how crucial they are to the majority of mankind.

Poverty has many roots, but the tap root is ignorance.

Allow the rich (no matter under what pretext, whether of philanthropy, or patriotism, or interest) to prescribe the education of the poor, and they prescribe their condition and relative importance.

Never before has man had such capacity to control his own environment, to end thirst and hunger, to conquer poverty and disease, to banish illiteracy and massive human misery.

In our tribal areas the literacy rate among women is 3%; among men, 17%; and there is no economy.

The fragility and powerlessness of the state in large swathes of Africa, and the uncivil nature of the forces that emerge to fill the gaps, give cause for concern. In places such as Sierra Leone or Liberia, where there is mass illiteracy and up to three-quarters of the women have been raped, what are the prospects for civil peace and reducing widespread violence?