— Frederick Douglass

"The things I want to know are in books. My best friend is the man who'll get me a book I [haven't] read."

— Abraham Lincoln

"Children are made readers on the laps of their parents."

— Emilie Buchwald

— Louisa Moats

— Marilyn Jager Adams

"There are many little ways to enlarge your child's world. Love of books is the best of all."

— Jacqueline Kennedy

"No entertainment is so cheap as reading, nor any pleasure so lasting. She will not want new fashions nor regret the loss of expensive diversions or variety of company if she can be amused with an author in her closet."

— Lady Montagu, providing advice on raising her granddaughter, 1752

"Learning is like rowing upstream; not to advance is to drop back."

— Chinese proverb

"The more that you read, the more things you will know. The more you learn, the more places you'll go."

— Dr. Seuss, "I Can Read With My Eyes Shut!"

"You may have tangible wealth untold. / Caskets of jewels and coffers of gold. / Richer than I you can never be – / I had a mother who read to me."

— Strickland Gillilan

"The ability to read awoke inside me some long dormant craving to be mentally alive."

— The Autobiography of Malcolm X, 1964

"A book must be the ax for the frozen sea within us."

— Franz Kafka, 1904

"The man who does not read good books is no better than the man who can't."

— Mark Twain

"To learn to read is to light a fire; every syllable that is spelled out is a spark."

— Victor Hugo, Les Miserables

"Oh, magic hour, when a child first knows she can read printed words!"

— A Tree Grows in Brooklyn, 1943

"The good of a book lies in its being read. A book is made up of signs that speak of other signs, which in their turn speak of things."

— Umberto Eco, The Name of the Rose

"There is more treasure in books than in all the pirate's loot on Treasure Island."

— Walt Disney