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  |   .--.     .--.     .--.     .--.     .--.     .--.      |
  |  |    |   |    |   |    |   |    |   |    |   |    |     |
  |  |READ|   |GROW|   |THINK   |RISE|   |FREE|   |LIVE|     |
  |  |    |   |    |   |    |   |    |   |    |   |    |     |
  |  '----'   '----'   '----'   '----'   '----'   '----'     |
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  |    "Reading had changed forever the course of my life."   |
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The Library

A meditation on reading, transformation, and liberation

Today's Reading Malcolm's Journey On Reading The Dictionary Transformative Readers Reading as Resistance Reflect About

Malcolm X on Reading and Education

"I have often reflected upon the new vistas that reading opened to me. I knew right there in prison that reading had changed forever the course of my life."
- Malcolm X
"My alma mater was books, a good library. Every time I catch a plane, I have with me a book that I want to read - and that's a lot of books these days."
- Malcolm X
"I could spend the rest of my life reading, just satisfying my curiosity."
- Malcolm X
"Without education, you're not going anywhere in this world."
- Malcolm X
"Education is the passport to the future, for tomorrow belongs to those who prepare for it today."
- Malcolm X
"You can't separate peace from freedom because no one can be at peace unless he has his freedom."
- Malcolm X
"The ability to read awoke inside me some long dormant craving to be mentally alive."
- Malcolm X
"I saw that the best thing I could do was get hold of a dictionary - to study, to learn some words."
- Malcolm X
"In the street, I had been the most articulate hustler out there... But now, trying to write simple English, I not only wasn't articulate, I wasn't even functional."
- Malcolm X
"I became increasingly frustrated at not being able to express what I wanted to convey in letters... This made me begin copying the dictionary."
- Malcolm X
"I woke up the next morning, thinking about those words - immensely proud to realize that not only had I written so much at one time, but I'd written words that I never knew were in the world."
- Malcolm X
"Anyone who has read a great deal can imagine the new world that opened."
- Malcolm X
"I never will forget how shocked I was when I began reading about slavery's total horror."
- Malcolm X
"Between Mr. Muhammad's teachings, my correspondence, my visitors... and my reading of books, months passed without my even thinking about being imprisoned."
- Malcolm X
"The teachings of Mr. Muhammad stressed how history had been 'whitened' - when white men had written history books, the black man simply had been left out."
- Malcolm X

Reflections on the Power of Reading

A book can be a door that opens onto worlds you never knew existed.

To read is to refuse the limits others would place on your mind.

Every book you read adds a new voice to the conversation in your head.

The library is democracy's great equalizer - all knowledge available to all people.

Self-education is an act of rebellion against a world that decides who deserves to learn.

Reading the words of those who came before is a form of ancestor communion.

A book can be a weapon, a tool, a friend, a mirror, a map.

When you read widely, you can no longer be told a single story.

The reader lives a thousand lives; the person who never reads lives only one.

Books don't change the world - but people who read books do.

To teach someone to read is to give them permanent revolution.

The margin of a book is where the reader talks back.

Some books are to be tasted, others to be swallowed, and some few to be chewed and digested.

A room without books is like a body without a soul.

Reading is an act of hope - hope that the author's world can illuminate your own.