* "One of the greatest gifts adults can give -- to their offspring and to their society -- is to read to children." -- Carl Sagan * Our species needs, and deserves, a citizenry with minds wide awake and a basic understanding of how the world works. -- Carl Sagan

In every country, we should be teaching our children the scientific method and the reasons for a Bill of Rights. With it comes a certain decency, humility and community spirit. In the demon-haunted world that we inhabit by virtue of being human, this may be all that stands between us and the enveloping darkness.
-- Carl Sagan

* Imparting education not only enlightens the receiver, but also broadens the giver - the teachers, the parents, the friends. -- Amartya Sen

we must go on fighting for basic education for all, but also emphasize the importance of the content of education. We have to make sure that sectarian schooling does not convert education into a prison, rather than being a passport to the wide world.
-- Amartya Sen

The elimination of ignorance, of illiteracy... and of needless inequalities in opportunities (is) to be seen as objectives that are valued for their own sake. They expand our freedom to lead the lives we have reason to value, and these elementary capabilities are of importance on their own
-- Amartya Sen

* "We know that many boys and girls leave school because of poverty, because they have to work. However, there are an important number of children who abandon their studies because of the abuses they're subject to by teachers and their own parents." -- Shakira

* International Literacy Day is an opportunity to recognize and celebrate the importance of literacy to individuals and their communities, and to honor the teachers and volunteers who are making a difference by helping children and adults learn to read and write. -- Robert Alan Silverstein

* Poverty and lack of knowledge must be challenged. -- Russell Simmons

Education is what survives when what has been learned has been forgotten.
-- B. F. Skinner

The great aim of education is not knowledge but action.
-- Herbert Spencer

"The illiterate of the 21st centurywill not be those who cannot read and write, but those who cannot learn, unlearn, and relearn."
-- Alvin Toffler

 

* What makes me angry? The education of children. How in God's name can you expect to have a functioning society the way we teach our kids? -- Kathleen Turner

Because there is global insecurity, nations are engaged in a mad arms race, spending billions of dollars wastefully on instruments of destruction, when millions are starving. And yet, just a fraction of what is extended so obscenely on defense budgets would make a real difference in enabling God's children to fill their stomachs, be educated, and be given the chance to lead fulfilled and happy lives. -- Desmond Tutu

* ...just a fraction of what is extended so obscenely on defense budgets would make a real difference in enabling God's children to fill their stomachs, be educated, and be given the chance to lead fulfilled and happy lives. -- Desmond Tutu

* "Teaching kids how to feed themselves and how to live in a community responsibly is the center of an education." -- Alice Waters

* "To have a peaceful population, we must teach peace." -- Cora Weiss

* Education and democracy have the same goal: the fullest possible development of human capabilities. -- Paul Wellstone

* "I fervently believe that, as someone has said before, "When you change the way you look at things, the things you look at change." I want to help change the way young people look at school, and hence, the way they look at their futures." -- Kanye West

* Education is the mother of leadership. -- Wendell Wilkie

* Only that education deserves emphatically to be termed cultivation of the mind which teaches young people how to begin to think. -- Mary Wollstonecraft

“Education is the power to think clearly, the power to act well in the world's work, and the power to appreciate life.”
-- Brigham Young

"Literacy arouses hopes, not only in society as a whole but also in the individual who is striving for fulfilment, happiness and personal benefit by learning how to read and write. Literacy... means far more than learning how to read and write... The aim is to transmit... knowledge and promote social participation."
-- UNESCO Institute for Education, Hamburg