Walter J. Ong

Learners are doers, not recipients.

— Walter J. Ong

Without writing, the literate mind would not and could not think as it does, not only when engaged in writing but normally…

— Walter J. Ong

“Few Chinese who write can write all of the spoken Chinese words that they can understand. To become significantly learned in the…

— Walter J. Ong

Print encourages a sense of closure, a sense that what is found in a text has been finalized, has reached a state…

— Walter J. Ong

For the way in which the word is experienced is always momentous

— Walter J. Ong

“Homeric Greece and everything that philosophy after Plato stood for was, however superficially cordial and continuous, in fact deeply antagonistic, if often…

— Walter J. Ong

“Manuscripts were not easy to read, by later typographic standards, and what readers found in manuscripts they tended to commit at least…

— Walter J. Ong

There is no way to write unless you read, and read a lot.

— Walter J. Ong

“The clichés in political denunciations in many low-technology, developing cultures—enemy of the people, capitalist war-mongers —that strike high literates as mindless are…

— Walter J. Ong

“Indeed, the diary demands, in a way, the maximum fictionalizing of the utterer and the addressee. Writing is always a kind of…

— Walter J. Ong

“Sight isolates, sound incorporates. Whereas sight situates the observer outside what he views, at a distance, sound pours into the hearer. Vision…

— Walter J. Ong