| Link | Quote | Stars | Tags | Author |
| 0606f50 | As centuries of dictators have known, an illiterate crowd is the easiest to rule; since the craft of reading cannot be untaught once it has been acquired, the second-best recourse is to limit its scope. | reading dictators illiteracy | Alberto Manguel | |
| 5b3f0d2 | More than the divides of race, class, or gender, more than rural or urban, believer or nonbeliever, red state or blue state, our culture has been carved up into radically distinct, unbridgeable, and antagonistic entities that no longer speak the same language and cannot communicate. This is the divide between a literate, marginalized minority and those who have been consumed by an illiterate mass culture. | mass-culture illiteracy | Chris Hedges |