"...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/Zan 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...." -Ray
Bradbury
"Though I disagree with everything you say, I will defend to the death your right to say it."
-NOT Voltaire; it was some scholar that was studying Voltaire, and summed up his beliefs in this statement
"You have not converted a man because you have silenced him."
-John Morley
"Every burned book enlightens the world."
-Ralph Waldo Emerson
"Obviously, the danger is not in the actual act of reading itself, but rather, the possibility that the texts children read will incite questions, introduce novel ideas, and provoke critical inquiry."
-Persis M. Karim (The New Assault on Libraries)
"Without free speech no search for truth is possible... no discovery of truth is useful... Better a thousandfold abuse of free speech than denial of free speech. The abuse dies in a day, but the denial slays the life of the people, and entombs the hope of the race."
-Charles Bradlaugh
"The ultimate form of censorship is assassination."
-George Bernard Shaw
"Free speech not only lives, it rocks!"
-Oprah Winfrey
"Freedom of speech means that you shall not do something to people either for the views they have, or the views they express, or the words they speak or write."
Hugo L. Black, U.S. Supreme Court Justice 1963
"It is called the First Amendment. ...Simple words marching in seried ranks. Compact, concise. To the point. Clear and pure. It's freedom's music."
Jack Valenti, Chairman of the Motion Picture Association of America, 1998
"Freedom of the press is not just important to democracy, it is democracy."
Walter Cronkite, 1980
"If you can't annoy somebody with what you write, I think there's little point in writing."
Kingsley Amis, British novelist, 1971
"You can cage the singer but not the song."
Harry Belafonte, 1988
"When the conspiracy of lies surrounding me demands of me to silence the one word of truth given to me, that word becomes the one word I wish to utter above all others."
Andre P. Brink, South African novelist, 1983
"Our whole constitutional heritage rebels at the thought of giving government the power to control men's minds."
Thurgood Marshall, 1969
"The freedom of the individual and rights of conscience will have no place in a society where government espouses a particular religious view of morality, one that has no room for deviation from the norm."
Arlene Carmen, Civil Rights activist, 1986
"Free speech is life itself."
Salman Rushdie, 1990
"Where they have burned books, they will end in burning human beings."
Heinrich Heine
"To hear one voice clearly, we must have freedom to hear them all."
Kerry Brock, of the Freedom Forum, 1997
"I am opposed to any form of tyranny over the mind of man."
Thomas Jefferson
Home
Intro
Censorship Articles
List of Banned/Challenged Books
The First Amendment
Banned Book of the Month
Education for a Sustainable Future
Contribute to Page 451
Threats to Free Speech
Links
The Childrens' Book Controversy
Freedom FROM Religion?
Ray Bradbury on Censorship
