Knowledge is like money: to be of value it must circulate, and in circulating it can increase in quantity and, hopefully, in value.
Louis L'AmourRead
I have read my books by many lights, hoarding their beauty, their wit or wisdom against the dark days when I would have no book, nor a place to read. I have known hunger of the belly kind many times over, but I have known a worse hunger: the need to know and to learn.
Interpretation
The quote emphasizes the value of knowledge and learning, contrasting it with physical hunger.
In this quote, Louis L'Amour reflects on the profound significance of books and the knowledge they provide. He contrasts his experiences of physical hunger with a deeper, more insatiable hunger for learning and understanding, suggesting that the thirst for knowledge can be more pressing than basic needs. This highlights the enduring power of literature and education as sources of sustenance for the mind and spirit, especially during difficult times.
In practice
Use this quote in a speech about the importance of education and lifelong learning.
Knowledge is like money: to be of value it must circulate, and in circulating it can increase in quantity and, hopefully, in value.
One who returns to a place sees it with new eyes. Although the place may not have changed, the viewer inevitably has. For the first time things invisible before become suddenly visible.
Once you have read a book you care about, some part of it is always with you.
If you wait for inspiration, you're not a writer, but a waiter.
Books are the perfect Time Machine. By the simple act of opening a book you can, in an instant, be travelling up a jungle river without once being bitten by mosquitoes, or you can almost die of thirst in the desert while holding a cold drink in your hand, or dine in the finest restaurants and never have to worry about paying the bill, or ride the wild country of our western frontier and never worry about losing your scalp to a raiding party.
Adventure is just a romantic name for trouble. It sounds swell when you write about it, but it's hell when you meet it face to face in a dark and lonely place.
If the truth is told, the youth can grow.
If education is beaten by training, civilization dies.
If you ask a ten-year-old girl what she wants to do when she grows up and a fourteen-year-old girl what she wants to be when she grows up, in many cases, the older child will have a much less free sense of what's possible.
By fully committing to our public education system and engaging holistically from cradle to career, we can guarantee that all of our children in Georgia, no matter their needs, have the kinds of teachers and neighbors in their lives that my mother had.
Unless the schools provide our children with a vision of human possibility that enlightens and empowers them with knowledge and taste, they will simply play their role in someone else's marketing schemes. Unless they understand deeply the sources of our democracy, they will take it for granted and fail to exercise their rights and responsibilities.
Just as the largest library, badly arranged, is not so useful as a very moderate one that is well arranged, so the greatest amount of knowledge, if not elaborated by our own thoughts, is worth much less than a far smaller volume that has been abundantly and repeatedly thought over.
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