The problem in our country isn't with books being banned, but with people no longer reading. Look at the magazines, the newspapers around us - it's all junk, all trash, tidbits of news. The average TV ad has 120 images a minute. Everything just falls off your mind. You don't have to burn books to destroy a culture. Just get people to stop reading them.
Interpretation
The decline in reading is more harmful than the act of censoring books.
Ray Bradbury emphasizes that the real threat to culture is not solely the banning of books, but rather the disinterest in reading altogether. He points out that the media today is filled with superficial content, which distracts and diminishes our capacity for critical thinking and understanding, thus threatening our cultural foundation.
In practice
In a discussion about the importance of literacy, you can quote Bradbury to emphasize the necessity of reading.
I've written about 2,000 short stories; I've only published 300 and I feel I'm still learning. Any man who keeps working is not a failure. He may not be a great writer, but if he applies the old fashioned virtues of hard, constant labor, he'll eventually make some kind of career for himself as a writer. Ray Bradbury, 1967 interview (Doing the Math - that means for every story he sold, he wrote six "un-publishable" ones. Keep typing!)
I never went to college, so I went to the library.
There must be something in books, something we can’t imagine, to make a woman stay in a burning house; there must be something there. You don’t stay for nothing.
I think the sun is a flower, That blooms for just one hour.
The first thing a writer should be is - excited. He should be a thing of fevers and enthusiasms. Without such vigor, he might as well be out picking peaches or digging ditches; God knows it'd be better for his health.
You can't try to do things; you simply must do them.
Public intellectuals are often put in the position of having their words, no matter how off-the-cuff, treated as doctrine.
Without books I would not have become a vivacious reader, and if you are not a reader you are not a writer.
By all means read the Puritans, they are worth more than all the modern stuff put together.
Live in the serene peace of laboratories and libraries
As citizens, I'm asking you not to leave any child behind. I'm asking you not to be color blind, but to be color brave, so that every child knows that their future matters and their dreams are possible.
The old lessons (work, self-discipline, sacrifice, teamwork, fighting to achieve) aren't being taught by many people other than football coaches these days. The football coach has a captive audience and can teach these lessons because the communication lines between himself and his players are more wide open than between kids and parents. We better teach these lessons or else the country's future population will be made up of a majority of crooks, drug addicts, or people on relief.
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