Illiteracy Quotes
The need for general scientific understanding by the public has never been larger, and the penalty for scientific illiteracy never harsher... Lack of scientific fundamentals causes people to make foolish decisions about issues such as the toxicity of chemicals, the efficacy of medicines, the changes in the global climate.
Peter Agre
In ancient times there was no public education, except that of the forum, the theater, and the street, and the general degree of illiteracy was very high.... the early men of science were left very much to themselves and such a phrase as "the scientific culture of Alexandria in the third century B. C." does not cover any reality. In a sense, this is still true today; the real pioneers are so far ahead of the crowd (even a very literate crowd) that they remain almost alone...
George Sarton
I have no doubt in my mind that our chief national problems relating to the eradication of poverty, illiteracy and disease and the scientific production and distribution can be tackled only along socialistic lines. The Very first thing that our future national government will have to do is to set up a commission for drawing up a comprehensive plan for reconstruction.
Subhas Chandra Bose
A political system seeking to function amongst ignorant, illiterate and barbaric people could have marvelous principles but could only succeed in being ignorant, illiterate and barbaric unless one addressed the people one by one and cured the ignorance, illiteracy and barbarism of each citizen.
L. Ron Hubbard
A good many times I have been present at gatherings of people who, by the standards of the traditional culture, are thought highly educated and who have with considerable gusto been expressing their incredulity at the illiteracy of scientists. Once or twice I have been provoked and have asked the company how many of them could describe the Second Law of Thermodynamics. The response was cold: it was also negative. Yet I was asking something which is about the scientific equivalent of: Have you read a work of Shakespeare's?
C. P. Snow
Even while I protest the assembly-line production of our food, our songs, our language, and eventually our souls, I know that it was a rare home that baked good bread in the old days. Mother's cooking was with rare exceptions poor, that good unpasteurized milk touched only by flies and bits of manure crawled with bacteria, the healthy old-time life was riddled with aches, sudden death from unknown causes, and that sweet local speech I mourn was the child of illiteracy and ignorance. It is the nature of a man as he grows older, a small bridge in time, to protest against change, particularly change for the better.
John Steinbeck
Russia thus interests us because it may help us to find some solution for the great problems which face the world today. It interests us specially because conditions there have not been, and are not even now, very dissimilar to conditions in India. Both are vast agricultural countries with only the beginnings of industrialisation, and both have to face poverty and illiteracy. If Russia finds a satisfactory solution for these, our work in India is made easier.
Jawaharlal Nehru
We are a society awash in skillfully manufactured lies. Solitude that makes thought possible-a removal from the electronic cacophony that besieges us-is harder and harder to find. We have severed ourselves from a print-based culture. We are unable to grapple with the nuances and complexity of ideas. We have traded ideas for fabricated clichés. We speak in the hollow language we are given by our corporate masters. Reality, presented to us as image, is unexamined and therefore false. We are culturally illiterate. And because of our cultural illiteracy we are easily manipulated and controlled.
Chris Hedges
Once more, the spectre of Cold War is everywhere. Defence budgets, a decimal part of which could free humanity from hunger, disease, illiteracy, and poverty, instead of decreasing, have grown. The gap between 'the haves' and 'the have-nots' is daily widening. Many nations seem to be politically independent but cannot use their independence to deal with their problems or to prosper because foreign influence and interference is still strong. Fratricide and similar savagery in the world sting the human conscience. Racial discrimination a mark of shame on twentieth-century man, although intolerable to most humans can still be seen in various parts of the world. And the power-seeking policies of the strong are hampering the execution of United Nations' ideals.
Muhammad Reza Pahlavi
Why should we put up with the present evils in our society? As opposed to the society we are visualizing, the present one can be described as a diseased one. The evils are there on all levels, international and national, and even within the smaller units such as towns and families. Of course, the disease did not appear like a bolt from the blue, either yesterday, or last year. It is the result of factors that have deep roots and long lives. These consist of privations, discriminations oppressions, bigotries, hatreds, and hostilities; poverty, ignorance, hunger, and illiteracy. Each and all of these have been left to us as ar evil heritage from the past. The fundamental difference between our situation today and that of our forefathers is that now knowledge has enabled us to realize that these evils are neither natural nor inevitable in the same way as we have found that cholera or the bubonic plague are not necessary calamities.
Muhammad Reza Pahlavi
Today we are talking not just about warring sides but about humanity at large. Any reasonable man finds it hard to believe that while hunger, diseases, social inequality, economic underdevelopment and illiteracy are in existence, hundreds of billions of dollars are wasted to feed the insatiable monster - the arms race.
Yevgeniy Chazov
Conversion of Hindus into other religions is dangerous to the security of the nation and the country. It is therefore necessary to put a stop to it. It is by exploitation of poverty, illiteracy and ignorance, offering of inducement and by deceptive tactics that people are converted. It is but right that this unjust activity is prohibited. It is a duty we have to discharge towards protecting our brethren in ignorance and poverty.
Madhav Sadashiv Golwalkar
