censorship quotes

“Libraries should challenge censorship in the fulfillment of their responsibility to provide information and enlightenment.”

—ALA Library Bill of Rights

" If your library is not 'unsafe', it probably isn't doing its job.“

-- John Berry, Iii, Library Journal, October 1999

"There are worse crimes than burning books. One of them is not reading them. “

-- Joseph Alexandrovitch Brodsky, 1991, Russian-American poet, b. St. Petersburg and exiled 1972 (1940-1996)

"Every burned book enlightens the world.“

-- Ralph Waldo Emerson

"This is slavery, not to speak one's thought."

-- Euripides, Greek tragic poet (480 or 485 B.C. - 406 B.C)

"They that can give up essential liberty to obtain a little temporary safety deserve neither liberty nor safety.“

-- Benjamin Franklin, Historical Review of Pennsylvania, 1759

"If all printers were determined not to print anything till they were sure it would offend nobody, there would be very little printed.“

-- Benjamin Franklin, 1730

"Fear of corrupting the mind of the younger generation is the loftiest form of cowardice.“

-- Holbrook Jackson, British journalist, writer and publisher

"Books and ideas are the most effective weapons against intolerance and ignorance.“

-- Lyndon Baines Johnson, February 11, 1964

"One cannot and must not try to erase the past merely because it does not fit the present.“

-- Golda Meir, Israeli political leader (1898-1978)

"Censorship of anything, at any time, in any place, on whatever pretense, has always been and always be the last resort of the boob and the bigot.“

-- Eugene O'Neill, American playwright (1888-1953)

"What is freedom of expression? Without the freedom to offend, it ceases to exist.“

-- Salman Rushdie

"Censorship reflects a society's lack of confidence in itself. It is the hallmark of an authoritarian regime...“

-- Justice Potter Stewart, dissenting Ginzberg v. United States, 383 U.S. 463 (1966)

"Once a government is committed to the principle of silencing the voice of opposition, it has only one way to go, and that is down the path of increasingly repressive measures, until it becomes a source of terror to all its citizens and creates a country where everyone lives in fear."-- Harry S. Truman, message to Congress, August 8, 1950

"Censorship is telling a man he can't have a steak just because a baby can't chew it.“

-- Mark Twain

"All these people talk so eloquently about getting back to good old-fashioned values. Well, as an old poop I can remember back to when we had those old-fashioned values, and I say let's get back to the good old-fashioned First Amendment of the good old-fashioned Constitution of the United States -- and to hell with the censors! Give me knowledge or give me death!"-- Kurt Vonnegut, author

"An idea that is not dangerous is unworthy of being called an idea at all.“

-- Oscar Wilde

"We are not afraid to entrust the American people with unpleasant facts, foreign ideas, alien philosophies, and competitive values. For a nation that is afraid to let its people judge the truth and falsehood in an open market is a nation that is afraid of its people.“

-- John F. Kennedy. Remarks made on the 20th anniversary of the Voice of America at H.E.W. Auditorium, February 26, 1962

“Restriction of free thought and free speech is the most dangerous of all subversions. It is the one un-American act that could most easily defeat us.”

—Supreme Court Justice William O. Douglas