A Quote by Alberto Manguel

In every literate society, learning to read is something of an initiation, a ritualized passage out of a state of dependency and rudimentary communication. — © Alberto Manguel
In every literate society, learning to read is something of an initiation, a ritualized passage out of a state of dependency and rudimentary communication.
Men of wit, learning and virtue might strike out every offensive or unbecoming passage from plays.
Every positive change - every jump to a higher level of energy and awareness - involves a rite of passage. Each time to ascend to a higher rung on the ladder of personal evolution, we must go through a period of discomfort, of initiation. I have never found an exception.
Our dependency makes slaves out of us, especially if this dependency is a dependency of our self-esteem. If you need encouragement, praise, pats on the back from everybody, then you make everybody your judge.
Communication always changes society, and society was always organized around communication channels. Two hundred years ago it was mostly rivers. It was sea-lanes and mountain passes. The Internet is another form of communication and commerce. And society organizes around the channels.
If it is written and read with serious attention, a novel, like a myth or any great work of art, can become an initiation that helps us to make a painful rite of passage from one phase of life, one state of mind, to another. A novel, like a myth, teaches us to see the world differently; it shows us how to look into our own hearts and to see our world from a perspective that goes beyond our own self-interest.
Health is a state of perfect subatomic communication and ill health is a state when communication breaks down. We become ill when our waves are out of sync.
Defence was an afterthought, prompted by necessity; and its introduction as a State function, though effected doubtless with a view to the strengthening of the State, was really and in principle the initiation of the State's destruction.
Justice. To be ever ready to admit that another person is something quite different from what we read when he is there (or when we think about him). Or rather, to read in him that he is certainly something different, perhaps something completely different from what we read in him. Every being cries out silently to be read differently.
I think the phrase 'computer-literate' is an evil phrase. You don't have to be 'automobile-literate' to get along in this world. You don't have to be 'telephone-literate.' Why should you have to be 'computer-literate'?
If learning to read was as easy as learning to talk, as some writers claim, many more children would learn to read on their own. The fact that they do not, despite their being surrounded by print, suggests that learning to read is not a spontaneous or simple skill.
In a totalitarian state like North Korea, a group of neighbors gathering once a week to watch the latest episode of a forbidden soap opera is committing a political act, and forming, with the market traders who deliver them this treasure, a rudimentary civil society.
At the bottom of every person's dependency, there is always pain, Discovering the pain and healing it is an essential step in ending dependency.
I read the 'New York Times', I read 'The Nation', I read 'Newsweek', I read 'Time Magazine', I read 'Politico', I read 'Mediaite'. This is what I do! I read every day, I have interests, I'm like everybody out there who's watching, who's out there watching, you know?
Some writers have so confounded society with government, as to leave little or no distinction between them; whereas they are not only different, but have different origins ... Society is in every state a blessing, but Government, even in its best state, is but a necessary evil; in its worst state, an intolerable one.
Learning is not automatic. You do not automatically know how to read because you turn five. Most of us are sensitive to the fact that we still have something to learn at every step of the way. Learning is not automatic. It comes with seeking and searching, with reading and watching, with thinking, praying, and listening.
Communication is the most important skill in life. We spend most of our waking hours communicating. But consider this: You've spent years learning how to read and write, years learning how to speak. But what about listening?
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