A society can exist - many do exist - without writing, but no society can exist without reading.
Interpretation
Reading is essential for the survival of any society, even if writing is not.
Alberto Manguel emphasizes the critical role of reading in maintaining a functioning society. While societies can form and operate without the practice of writing, the act of reading is fundamental for knowledge, communication, and cultural continuity, thereby reinforcing the idea that literacy is vital for societal health and progress.
In practice
In a speech about improving education, one might quote Manguel to highlight the importance of reading skills.
The stories that unfold in the space of a writer's study, the objects chosen to watch over a desk, the books selected to sit on the shelves, all weave a web of echoes and reflections of meanings and affections, that lend a visitor the illusion that something of the owner of this space lives on between these walls, even if the owner is no more.
From fire, water, the passage of time, neglectful readers, and the hand of the censor, each of my books has escaped to tell me its story.
One book calls to another unexpectedly, creating alliances across different cultures and centuries.
It has always been my experience that, whatever groupings I choose for my books, the space in which I plan to lodge them necessarily reshapes my choice and, more important, in no time proves too small for them and forces me to change my arrangement. In a library, no empty shelf remains empty for long. Like Nature, libraries abhor a vacuum, and the problem of space is inherent in the very nature of any collection of books.
My books hold between their covers every story I've ever known and still remember, or have now forgotten, or may one day read; they fill the space around me with ancient and new voices.
I have no feelings of guilt regarding the books I have not read and perhaps will never read; I know that my books have unlimited patience. They will wait for me till the end of my days.
No graduation speaker will ever tell you that the future is anything but uncertain. It never is. But graduations need not only be obsessed with looking ahead; a graduation can be a day on which we turn back and trace our steps to see how we ended up where we are.
The books I loved in childhood - the first loves - Iβve read so often that Iβve internalized them in some really essential way: they are more inside me now than out.
Hold a book in your hand and you're a pilgrim at the gates of a new city.
I had not expected 'A Brief History of Time' to be a best seller. It was my first popular book and aroused a great deal of interest. Initially, many people found it difficult to understand. I therefore decided to try to write a new version that would be easier to follow.
No employment can be managed without arithmetic, no mechanical invention without geometry.
It seems to me of great importance to teach children respect for life.
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