literature impact Quotes

People who love literature have at least part of their minds immune from indoctrination. If you read, you can learn to think for yourself.

And I found both literature and the church very dramatic presences in the world of the 1950s.

So long as ignorance and poverty exist on earth, books of the nature of Les Miserables cannot fail to be of use.

If my book generates any sort of dialogue among Afghans, then I think it will have done a service to the community.

It is the life in literature that acts upon life.

Everything which is good in me should be credited to books.

If I could write a story that would do for the Indian one-hundredth part what 'Uncle Tom's Cabin' did for the Negro, I would be thankful the rest of my life.

If a nation's literature declines, the nation atrophies and decays.

The content of a book holds the power of education and it is with this power that we can shape our future and change lives.

The novel is the one bright book of life. Books are not life. They are only tremulations on the ether. But the novel as a tremulation can make the whole man alive tremble.

I think it's likely that the civilizing effect of literature has done most of the work, and still continues to do. Look at Steven Pinker's book, The Better Angels of Our Nature: Why Violence Has Declined. It proves beyond any shadow of doubt that violence has declined dramatically throughout the centuries. There are various reasons for it: the rise of the state, Leviathan, the monopoly of violence, children's rights, animal rights. They're all positive signs.

A lively and lasting sense of filial duty is more effectually impressed on the mind of a son or daughter by reading King Lear, than by all the dry volumes of ethics, and divinity that ever were written.

What I realized is that my interest in literature has more deeply structured my practice than I thought.

Until I read Anne Frank's diary, I had found books a literal escape from what could be the harsh reality around me. After I read the diary, I had a fresh way of viewing the both literature and the world. From then on, I found I was impatient with books that were not honest or that were trivial and frivolous.

This is the sorcery of literature. We are healed by our stories.

I have no illusions that my work can rouse the masses to create change, because literature simply doesn't have that power anymore in my country, if it does anywhere. But I do hope that it can be read by those who are in positions to create change, or that it can at least be part of that dialogue.

Literature sort of makes your daily operation, your daily conduct, the management of your affairs in the society a bit more complex. And it puts what you do in perspective, and people don't like to see themselves or their activities in perspective. They don't feel quite comfortable with that. Nobody wants to acknowledge the insignificance of his life, and that is very often the net result of reading a poem.

I don't accept the idea that literature can be just entertainment and that there is no consequences of literature in the real world.