found online by Raymond
From A Wayfarer’s Notes:
Let highest literacy prevail! For in reading we gain personal knowledge of the past, with its wisdom and folly, bypassing hearsay; and thus build a bulwark of wisdom against any barbarian present and future. Not that everyone need be summoned to this vocation, nor needs to be. It is but a leaven in the entire recipe & my duty to add it while I can.
The world as a whole has nothing to fear from illiteracy, though in today’s frenetic world it may—alas!—be a handicap to those for whom simple living, close to the soil, is not an option. Illiteracy carries its own blessings—for example to be spared most of the lies and clichés that corrode honest dealings and even private thought.