Literacy is not a luxury, it is a right and a responsibility. If our world is to meet the challenges of the twenty-first century we must harness the energy and creativity of all our citizens.
Interpretation
Literacy is essential for everyone, not just a privilege for the few.
This quote emphasizes that literacy is a fundamental human right that everyone should have access to, as it empowers individuals to contribute positively to society. Clinton argues that in order to tackle the challenges of the modern world, we must engage the talents and innovative capabilities of all members of the community through education and literacy.
In practice
During a speech at a literacy conference.
You know, there was a recent poll which said that young people in the generation of the students here felt it was far more likely that they would see a UFO than that they would draw Social Security... It's very important you understand this. Once you understand this, you realize this is not an episode from the X Files, and you're not more likely to see a UFO if you do certain specific things.
When we got organized as a country, [and] wrote a fairly radical Constitution, with a radical Bill of Rights, giving radical amounts of freedom to Americans, it was assumed that Americans who had that freedom would use it responsibly...When personal freedom is being abused, you have to move to limit it.
For too long we've been told about 'us' and 'them.' Each and every election we see a new slate of arguments and ads telling us that 'they' are the problem, not 'us.' But there can be no 'them' in America. There's only us.
There is a huge body of business evidence now showing that energy savings give better service at lower cost with higher profit. We have to tear down barriers to successful markets and we have to create incentives to enter them.
Demand that your government pays more attention. It's immoral that people in Africa die like flies of diseases that no one dies of in the United States. And the more disease there is, the more political unrest there will be, leading to more Darfurs, which the U.S. will have to pay to fix.
I was not elected to produce a pile of vetoes.
Children know perfectly well that unicorns aren’t real, but they also know that books about unicorns, if they are good books, are true books.
We want the world our children inherit to be defined by the values enshrined in the U.N. Charter: peace, justice, respect, human rights, tolerance, and solidarity.
Libraries are not just places where people go read a book, but places where an immigrant goes to take English lessons and where folks out of a job search for community.
....Man's struggle to be rational about himself, about his relationship to his own society and to other peoples and nations involves a constant search for understanding among all peoples and all cultures-a search that can only be effective when learning is pursued on a worldwide basis.
I believe people should study a little bit every day. It should become habitual, like brushing your teeth, combing your hair, having a shower or getting dressed. Study the mind, the laws of the universe and paradigms. There's enough information on those subjects to keep a person studying forever.
That's the public-school system all over. They may kick you out, but they never let you down.
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