Banned Books Quotes

The book which most deserved to be banned would be a catalog of banned books.

Something will be offensive to someone in every book, so you've got to fight it.

Possession of books denounced as heretical was made a criminal offense. Copies of such books were burned and destroyed. But in Upper Egypt, someone, possibly a monk from a nearby monastery of St Pachomius, took the banned books and hid them from destruction - in the jar where they remained buried for almost 1,600 years.

Being an author of banned books is cool, I've decided.

I believe in censorship. I made a fortune out of it.

Censorship ends in logical completeness when nobody is allowed to read any books except the books that nobody can read.

The dirtiest book of all is the expurgated book.

Young minds - young brains - need stories and ideas like the ones in those [censored and banned] books in order to grow. They need ideas that you disagree with. They need ideas that I disagree with. Or they'll never be able to figure out what ideas they believe in.

The first condition of progress is the removal of censorship.

I always order the banned books from a black market dealer in California, figuring if the State of Mississippi banned them, they must be good.

You know what they say: When people start burning books they'll soon burn human beings.

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

Censorship is the child of fear and the father of ignorance.

Yes, books are dangerous. They should be dangerous - they contain ideas.

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

Don't join the book burners. Do not think you are going to conceal thoughts by concealing evidence that they ever existed.

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

Every burned book enlightens the world.

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

I hate it that Americans are taught to fear some books and some ideas as though they were diseases.

There is more than one way to burn a book. And the world is full of people running about with lit matches. Every minority, be it Baptist/Unitarian, Irish/Italian/Octogenarian/Zen Buddhist, Zionist/Seventh-day Adventist, Women's Lib/Republican, Mattachine/FourSquareGospel feels it has the will, the right, the duty to douse the kerosene, light the fuse. Every dimwit editor who sees himself as the source of all dreary blanc-mange plain porridge unleavened literature, licks his guillotine and eyes the neck of any author who dares to speak above a whisper or write above a nursery rhyme.

There is more than one way to burn a book. And the world is full of people running about with lit matches.

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

Banning books gives us silence when we need speech. It closes our ears when we need to listen. It makes us blind when we need sight.

Don't join the book burners!

Censorship, like charity, should begin at home, but, unlike charity, it should end there.

[I]t's not just the books under fire now that worry me. It is the books that will never be written. The books that will never be read. And all due to the fear of censorship. As always, young readers will be the real losers.

Think for yourselves and let others enjoy the privilege to do so, too.

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

Books won't stay banned. They won't burn. Ideas won't go to jail.

Books won't stay banned. They won't burn. Ideas won't go to jail. In the long run of history, the censor and the inquisitor have always lost. The only sure weapon against bad ideas is better ideas. The source of better ideas is wisdom. The surest path to wisdom is a liberal education.

The books that the world calls immoral are books that show the world its own shame.

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.

Congress shall make no law respecting an establishment of religion, or prohibiting the free exercise thereof.

Although there are those who wish to ban my books because I have used language that is painful, I have chosen to use the language that was spoken during the period, for I refuse to whitewash history. The language was painful and life was painful for many African Americans, including my family. I remember the pain.

There's more than one way to be a girl

There is more than one way to burn a book.

To reject the word is to reject the human search.

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