The age of the pulp magazine was the last in which youngsters, to get their primitive material, were forced to be literate.
Interpretation
Literacy was essential for young people to engage with the pulp magazines of the past.
Isaac Asimov reflects on a time when pulp magazines required readers, particularly the youth, to be literate to access various narratives and information. This highlights the critical role that reading and literacy played in shaping the perspectives and knowledge of younger generations, as they sought enjoyment and understanding through print media.
In practice
Using this quote during a literacy campaign to emphasize the importance of reading.
Democracy cannot survive overpopulation. Human dignity cannot survive it. Convenience and decency cannot survive it. As you put more and more people into the world, the value of life not only declines, but it disappears. It doesn't matter if someone dies.
Science does not promise absolute truth, nor does it consider that such a thing necessarily exists. Science does not even promise that everything in the Universe is amenable to the scientific process.
Democracy cannot survive overpopulation.
Although the time of death is approaching me, I am not afraid of dying and going to Hell or (what would be considerably worse) going to the popularized version of Heaven. I expect death to be nothingness and, for removing me from all possible fears of death, I am thankful to atheism.
A subtle thought that is in error may yet give rise to fruitful inquiry that can establish truths of great value.
During the century after Newton, it was still possible for a man of unusual attainments to master all fields of scientific knowledge. But by 1800, this had become entirely impracticable.
This assumption that the blue collar crowd is not supposed to read it, or a farmer in his overalls is not to read poetry, seems to be dangerous if not tragic.
An environment-based education movement--at all levels of education--will help students realize that school isn't supposed to be a polite form of incarceration, but a portal to the wider world.
Listen to the desires of your children. Encourage them and then give them the autonomy to make their own decision.
Concentration is the key that opens up to the child the latent treasures within him.
I am an earnest advocate of manual training and trade teaching for black boys, and for white boys, too.
There are some people who read too much: the bibliobibuli. I know some who are constantly drunk on books, as other men are drunk on whiskey or religion. They wander through this most diverting and stimulating of worlds in a haze, seeing nothing and hearing nothing.
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