"Where they have burned books,
they will end in burning human beings."
Heinrich Heine
Nazis burn books in Berlin in 1933.
"Burning is no answer."
Camille Desmoulines
reply to Robespierre, January 7, 1794,
on burning his newspaper Vieux Cordelier
"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
"Every burned book enlightens the
world."
Ralph Waldo Emerson
"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."
Alfred Whitney
Essays on Education
"You have not converted a man because you
have silenced him."
John Morley
"You see these dictators on their pedestals,
surrounded by the bayonets of their soldiers and the truncheons of their
police. Yet in their hearts there is unspoken - unspeakable! - fear. They are
afraid of words and thoughts! Words spoken abroad, thoughts stirring at home,
all the more powerful because they are forbidden. These terrify them. A little
mouse - a little tiny mouse! - of thought appears in the room, and even the
mightiest potentates are thrown into panic."
Winston Churchill
"...but he who destroys a good book,
kills Reason itself, kills the Image of God..."
"For books are not absolutely dead things,
but... do preserve as in a vial the purest efficacy and extraction of that
living intellect that bred them. I know they are as lively, and as vigorously
productive, as those fabulous Dragon's teeth; and being sown up and down, may
chance to spring up armed men. And yet on the other hand unless warriors be
used, as good almost kill a Man a good Book; who kills a man kills a reasonable
creature, God's image; but he who destroys a good book, kills Reason itself,
kills the Image of God, as it were in the eye. Many a man lives a burden to the
Earth; but a good Book is the precious life-blood of a master-spirit, embalmed
and treasured up on purpose to a life beyond life."
John Milton
Areopagitica