A Quote by James Purdy

The public is totally illiterate in America. It can't read at all. It's absolutely insensitive to words.

James Purdy

Quote Topics

Absolutely America Illiterate Insensitive Public Read Totally Words

Quote Author

James Purdy
American - Novelist
July 17, 1914 - March 13, 2009

America is also the nameless foreigner, the homeless refugee, the hungry boy begging for a job and the black body dangling on a tree. America is the illiterate immigrant who is ashamed that the world of books and intellectual opportunities are closed to him. We are all that nameless foreigner, that homeless refugee, that hungry boy, that illiterate immigrant and that lynched black body. All of us, from the first Adams to the last Filipino, native born or alien, educated or illiterate-We are America!

Carlos Bulosan

What words can express her [the white woman’s] humiliation when, at the close of this long conflict, the government which she had served so faithfully held her unworthy of a voice in its councils, while it recognized as the political superiors of all the noble women of the nation the negro men just emerged from slavery, and not only totally illiterate, but also densely ignorant of every public question.

Susan B. Anthony

The Romans had been able to post their laws on boards in public places, confidant that enough literate people existed to read them; far into the Middle Ages, even kings remained illiterate.

J. M. Roberts

The public is absolutely fascinated by aging. They don't want to get old. And you can see - read Shakespeare. Read the sonnets. They're all about aging.

Cynthia Kenyon

In America, we don't, in daily discourse, use the words 'capitalism' or 'socialism.' They've been kind of nonexistent words, I would say, amongst the general public.

Michael Moore

'Death at an Early Age' was about racial segregation in Boston. 'Illiterate America' was about grownups who can't read. 'Rachel and Her Children' was about people who were homeless in the middle of Manhattan.

Jonathan Kozol

You must get into the habit of looking intensely at words, and assuring yourself of their meaning, syllable by syllable-nay, letter by letter... you might read all the books in the British Museum (if you could live long enough) and remain an utterly "illiterate," undeducated person; but if you read ten pages of a good book, letter by letter, - that is to say, with real accuracy- you are for evermore in some measure an educated person.

John Ruskin

There's a difference between being culturally insensitive - being insensitive towards a culture - and being insensitive.

Logan Paul

Now have two generations whose minds have been totally perverted, polluted, and destroyed by the American public education system, and, in particular, the history curriculum. Breitbart has a story on how this has happened. As the left appeases Muslims, public schools are teaching students to hate America.

Rush Limbaugh

He who has read Kafka's Metamorphosis and can look into his mirror unflinching may technically be able to read print, but is illiterate in the only sense that matters.

George Steiner

If you're totally illiterate and living on one dollar a day, the benefits of globalization never come to you.

Jimmy Carter

Public office is a public trust, the authority and opportunities of which must be used as absolutely as the public moneys for the public benefit, and not for the purposes of any individual or party.

Dorman Bridgeman Eaton

I read a lot, but in comparison to my family, it's nothing. I keep telling them, 'I'm the illiterate of the family.' My grandfather used to read five books at a time.

Aditi Rao Hydari

My son Bill, who came to me in 1960-he was 14 then, quoted the old parable to me: "It is not by their words, but by their deeds that ye shall know them" -pointing out that if I was a true atheist, I would not permit the public schools of America to force him to read the Bible and say prayers against his will. He was right.