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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.

Alberto Manguel

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Alberto Manguel
Age: 76
Born: 1948
Born: March 13
Editor
Translator
Writer
Buenos Ayres
Alberto Manguel
Cannot
Crowds
Acquired
Best
Rule
Dictator
Limits
Scope
Second
Craft
Untaught
Century
Centuries
Dictators
Since
Crafts
Recourse
Reading
Limit
Illiterate
Known
Crowd
Easiest

More quotes by Alberto Manguel

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At night, here in the library, the ghosts have voices.
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As readers, we have gone from learning a precious craft whose secret was held by a jealous few, to taking for granted a skin that has become subordinate to principles of mindless financial profit or mechanical efficiency, a skill for which governments care almost nothing.
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Books read in a public library never have the same flavour as books read in the attic or the kitchen.
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In every literate society, learning to read is something of an initiation, a ritualized passage out of a state of dependency and rudimentary communication.
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At night, here in the library, the ghosts have voices.... The various qualities of my readings seem to permeate my every muscle, so that when I finally decide to turn off the library light, I carry into my sleep the voices and the movements of the book I've just closed.
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I know that something dies when i give up my books, and that my memory keeps going back to them with mournful nostalgia.
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A book brings its own history to the reader.
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Ordered by subject, by importance, ordered according to whether the book was penned by God or by one of God's creatures, ordered alphabetically or by numbers or by the language in which the text is written, every library translates the chaos of discovery and creation into a structured system of hierarchies or a rampage of free associations.
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Readers are bullied in schoolyards and in locker-rooms as much as in government offices and prisons.
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In my fool hardy youth, when my friends were dreaming of heroic deeds in the realms of engineering and law, finance and national politics, I dreamt of becoming a librarian.
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In a library, no empty shelf remains empty for long.
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I've never really understood attachment to a place for reasons of birth. That my mother happened to give birth to me in a certain place doesn't, to my mind, justify any thankfulness towards that place. It could have been anywhere.
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One book calls to another unexpectedly, creating alliances across different cultures and centuries.
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Reality deals in specifics under the guise of generalities. Literature does the contrary.
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The readers who commited suicide after reading 'Werther' were not ideal but merely sentimental readers.
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Not until I came to Canada did I realize that snow was a four-letter word.
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I had a library of maybe 1,000 books in my room in Buenos Aires. I did have the sense that everything there was organised in the right way. You'll probably think I needed serious psychiatric treatment, but there were times when I would not buy a book because I knew it wouldn't fit one of the categories into which I had divided the library.
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In any of my pages in any of my books may life a perfect account of my secret experience of the world.
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Life happened because I turned the pages.
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Old books that we have known but not possessed cross our path and invite themselves over. New books try to seduce us daily with tempting titles and tantalizing covers.
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