A Quote by Gwynne Dyer
Take the year a country first reaches 50% literacy and add one or two generations to allow the idea to sink in and, democracy, more or less automatically, appears.
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The ideal of universal literacy, in the West anyway, was first of all a Protestant idea - that everybody had to be able to read to save their soul. That idea got transposed into an idea of the importance of literacy for democratic citizenship.
Remember, democracy never lasts long. It soon wastes, exhausts, and murders itself. There never was a democracy yet that did not commit suicide. It is in vain to say that democracy is less vain, less proud, less selfish, less ambitious, or less avaricious than aristocracy or monarchy. It is not true, in fact, and nowhere appears in history. Those passions are the same in all men, under all forms of simple government, and when unchecked, produce the same effects of fraud, violence, and cruelty.
One of the sadder things, I think,
Is how our birthdays slowly sink:
Presents and parties disappear,
The cards grow fewer year by year,
Till, when one reaches sixty-five,
How many care we're still alive?
I think visual literacy and media literacy is not without value, but I think plain old-fashioned text literacy and mathematical literacy are much more powerful and flexible ways to organize your mind.
My first full year of touring, I did 300 days on the road. That was not including the travel time or publicity or anything else - that was just dates. I was home probably less than 50 days that year.
You're a slave in your own country, White Man. Each year you get to keep less of the fruits of your labor; each year it gets more difficult to carry the burden the aliens have placed upon you; each year the cheap labor of aliens makes your future less secure; each year you retreat a few steps more into the world of slavery.
Too many people in the world associate democracy with their ability to go and buy more and more every year. I come from a country where it's much more popular to remind people that democracy is available at every income level, and this is something which you need to protect.
The more country that my music gets, the less it fits into the country world today. It's almost like there needs to be two genres, modern country and... country?
There's still this idea that women are over by the time they are 40, so that they can't play the love interest opposite a 50-year-old man. George Clooney is 52, but he's always on the arm of a thirt-something actress. He gets Vera Farmiga. You don't get a 50-year-old woman on the arm of a 30-year-old guy.
This idea you're going to take a 50-year-old coal miner and turn them into a software engineer is ridiculous.
I sit in the sink (while applying makeup). I do. I've broken more sinks...I sit in the sink, on top of a big square sink in my bathroom with my feet in the basin so I'm very close to the mirror with the good light, and I'm very comfortable. I also manage to put my two phones in the sink so that nothing, but nothing, could get me out of there.
Democracy's a very fragile thing. You have to take care of democracy. As soon as you stop being responsible to it and allow it to turn into scare tactics, it's no longer democracy, is it? It's something else. It may be an inch away from totalitarianism.
If I had my child to raise all over again,I'd finger paint more, and point the finger less.I'd do less correcting, and more connecting.I'd take my eyes off my watch, and watch with my eyes.I would care to know less, and know to care more.I'd take more hikes and fly more kites.I'd stop playing serious, and seriously play.I'd run through more fields, and gaze at more stars.I'd do more hugging, and less tugging.I would be firm less often, and affirm much more.I'd build self esteem first, and the house later.I'd teach less about the love of power, and more about the power of love.
Literacy is much more than an educational priority - it is the ultimate investment in the future and the first step towards all the new forms of literacy required in the twenty-first century. We wish to see a century where every child is able to read and to use this skill to gain autonomy.
If you look at the beginning of this country, when the pilgrims came to this country, the first year they had a communistic experiment. They said, 'OK, we're going to take the land, we're going to work the land together and share in the fruits of our labor.' They almost starved to death. Almost half of them died that first year.
Reversing structural problems in our economy that have been building up for two decades, that was gonna take time. It was gonna take more than a year. It was gonna take more than two years. It was gonna take more than one term. Probably takes more than one president.
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