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How can one be fully human without the dignity, glory, and power of the written word? Is it not to the world what memory is to the individual? By its means words spoken long ago and faraway may once more be heard. - (Mariners of Gor, Chapter 36, Sentence #504)

This produces the anomaly that many barbarian slaves, who are generally of high intelligence, will be literate in one or more of the barbarian languages, but illiterate in Gorean. Indeed, they are often kept so, deliberately, that they may be all the more helpless, as slaves, and know themselves all the better as mere slaves. Needless to say, all members of my caste, even from childhood, are taught to read. How can one be fully human without the dignity, glory, and power of the written word? Is it not to the world what memory is to the individual? By its means words spoken long ago and faraway may once more be heard. By the magic of such marks, the sorcery of small signs, we converse with those we have never met, touch dreams we could not otherwise share, at a glance rekindle flames which first burned in distant hearts. How else might one hear the tones of distant trumpets, the tramp of vanished armies, ford rivers where now lies cracked earth, witness distant sunsets, and stand wondering on the shores of vanished seas? Pani warriors, those of the high Pani, so to speak, I learn from the stranger, are almost all literate. It is not regarded as demeaning for them. - (Mariners of Gor)