“The man who reads nothing at all is better educated than the man who reads nothing but newspapers.”

“Nothing is better than reading and gaining more and more knowledge.”

Stephen Hawking (1942–2018) British theoretical physicist, cosmologist, and author

“A person who does not read is no better than one cannot read.”

Earl Nightingale (1921–1989) American motivational speaker

“For of all gainful professions, nothing is better, nothing more pleasing, nothing more delightful, nothing better becomes a well-bred man than agriculture.”
Omnium autem rerum, ex quibus aliquid adquiritur, nihil est agri cultura melius, nihil uberius, nihil dulcius, nihil homine libero dignius.

Marcus Tullius Cicero (-106–-43 BC) Roman philosopher and statesman

“The eighteenth-century polymath Thomas Young was the last person to have read all the books published in his lifetime. That means that he would've read all the Shakespeare and all the Greek and Roman classics and all the theology and all the philosophy and all the science. But the same man today, a man who had read all the books published today, would've had to've read all Dan Brown's novels, two volumes of Chris Moyles' autobiography, The World According to Clarkson by Jeremy Clarkson, The World according to Clarkson II by Jeremy Clarkson, The World according to Clarkson III by Jeremy Clarkson… his mind would be awash with bad metaphors and unsustainable, reactionary opinion; one long anecdote about the time that Comedy Dave put a pound coin in the urinal. In short, the man who had read everything published today would be more stupid than a man who had read nothing. That's not a good state of affairs.”

Stewart Lee (1968) English stand-up comedian, writer, director and musician

“It is better to be able neither to read nor write than to be able to do nothing else.”

William Hazlitt (1778–1830) English writer

“All teems with symbol; the wise man is the man who in any one thing can read another.”

Plotinus (203–270) Neoplatonist philosopher

“I have read and re-read the Arusha Declaration and found nothing wrong with it except perhaps replacing a few commas here and there… it was clear for some of us that it would only be a mad man who would stand up and defend the Arusha Declaration.”

Julius Nyerere (1922–1999) Tanzanian politician and writer, first Prime Minister and President of Tanzania

“books—there is a good kind of a book and a bad kind of a book. I am not to assume that you are all ill acquainted with this; but I may remind you that it is a very important consideration at present. It casts aside altogether the idea that people have that if they are reading any book—that if an ignorant man is reading any book, he is doing rather better than nothing at all.”

Thomas Carlyle (1795–1881) Scottish philosopher, satirical writer, essayist, historian and teacher

“Nothing is more commonplace than the reading experience, and yet nothing is more unknown. Reading is such a matter of course that at first glance it seems there is nothing to say about it.”

Tzvetan Todorov (1939–2017) Bulgarian historian, philosopher, structuralist literary critic, sociologist and essayist