Reading—Man’s Crowning Achievement – Sunday, November 17, 1985
If there is one crowning achievement in the collective history of mankind—one overshadowing accomplishment from among the aggregate of human discoveries and advances, it is perhaps man’s ability to read. Through that seemingly simple act, one can exchange thoughts and feelings, or transmit experience and learning from one generation to another.
Reading was once the privilege of royalty and the rich. Today, it is accessible to most of mankind. In fact, the average elementary student of today reads at higher levels than the average adult of only a few decades ago. And a short century ago, this skill was an unattainable dream for a large portion of the world’s population.
The mastery, the artistry, the wonder of reading!
Reading makes every person a philosopher, a poet, a statesman. It is reading which takes a boy from a log cabin to a nation’s White House. It is reading which makes the housewife’s voice as valid as that of the judge’s, which gives bargaining power to the coal miner and steel worker, which arms citizens with weapons to fight bureaucracy. With this single skill, more falsehoods have been uncovered, more despots dethroned, more truths enshrined than through all the battles ever fought.
They who love reading need no other gift. The mere act of reading can reduce the world to the size of a pocketbook. Through reading, we can sit in on the trial of Socrates or witness the first manned flight at Kitty hawk; we can share Robert Frost’s joy in observing a tuft of flowers, peer into the souls of men with Shakespeare’s piercing eyes, probe the depths of the universe with the mind of Einstein. And more. With reading we can monitor the very voice of God, through holy writ.
Reading is key to human development. It admits us to the world of thought and imagination, to the company of saints and sages, unlocks the fetters of ignorance and superstition, and sets the soul free to muse, to venture, to experience.
Yes, perhaps the mere ability to read is man’s greatest achievement—the golden thread of human experience with which the poor man is made rich, and without which the richest is made poor.
November 17, 1985
Broadcast Number 2,935