Gratitude Friday 8 15 25 Reading as a Path to Freedom

“Frederick Douglass taught that literacy is the path from slavery to freedom. There are many kinds of slavery and many kinds of freedom, but reading is still the path.” ― Carl Sagan

I recently had a conversation with someone close to me about what I thought had the most formative positive influence in my life. There are so many people who have helped shape me, but over and above all of those, I would have to say a lifelong devotion to reading books on a broad range of topics had had the most influence on who and what I am. It got me thinking about how access to books in our society is fairly open, anyone can find a way to read a book, and in this way invest in their own growth. It is the easiest path to learning. So, this week, a post of quotes on books and reading.

“A book is made from a tree. It is an assemblage of flat, flexible parts (still called "leaves") imprinted with dark pigmented squiggles. One glance at it and you hear the voice of another person, perhaps someone dead for thousands of years. Across the millennia, the author is speaking, clearly and silently, inside your head, directly to you. Writing is perhaps the greatest of human inventions, binding together people, citizens of distant epochs, who never knew one another. Books break the shackles of time ― proof that humans can work magic.” ― Carl Sagan

“A room without books is like a body without a soul.” - Marcus Tullius Cicero

“When I have a little money, I buy books; and if I have any left, I buy food and clothes.” ― Desiderius Erasmus Roterodamus

“Fairy tales are more than true: not because they tell us that dragons exist, but because they tell us that dragons can be beaten.” ― Neil Gaiman

“Think before you speak. Read before you think.” ― Fran Lebowitz

“You don't have to burn books to destroy a culture. Just get people to stop reading them.” ― Ray Bradbury

“No book is really worth reading at the age of ten which is not equally – and often far more – worth reading at the age of fifty and beyond.” ― C.S. Lewis

“I cannot remember the books I've read any more than the meals I have eaten; even so, they have made me.” ― Ralph Waldo Emerson

“In the case of good books, the point is not to see how many of them you can get through, but rather how many can get through to you.” ― Mortimer J. Adler

“I don't believe in the kind of magic in my books. But I do believe something very magical can happen when you read a good book.” ― J.K. Rowling

“And on the subject of burning books: I want to congratulate librarians, not famous for their physical strength or their powerful political connections or their great wealth, who, all over this country, have staunchly resisted anti-democratic bullies who have tried to remove certain books from their shelves, and have refused to reveal to thought police the names of persons who have checked out those titles. So the America I loved still exists, if not in the White House or the Supreme Court or the Senate or the House of Representatives or the media. The America I love still exists at the front desks of our public libraries.” ― Kurt Vonnegut

“My Best Friend is a person who will give me a book I have not read.” ― Abraham Lincoln

“Books are not made to be believed, but to be subjected to inquiry. When we consider a book, we mustn't ask ourselves what it says but what it means...” ― Umberto Eco

  “My alma mater was books, a good library.... I could spend the rest of my life reading, just satisfying my curiosity.” ― Malcolm X

“There is more treasure in books than in all the pirates' loot on Treasure Island and best of all, you can enjoy these riches every day of your life.” ― Walt Disney

“For books are not absolutely dead things, but do contain a potency of life in them to be as active as that soul was whose progeny they are; nay, they do preserve as in a vial the purest efficacy and extraction of that living intellect that bred them.” ― John Milton

I am grateful to have grown up with my nose in a book for hours at a time, and for all the book nerds over the course of history who wrote out their thoughts so others could spend time in their worlds.

What are you grateful for today?