"From the First Emperor of China who buried the scholars alive in 213 B.C. to the torchers of Harry Potter books in 21st-century America, people who destroy books show the deep and abiding power of literature more than any promoter."
-- Stephen Marche, in the Wall Street Journal 4/18-19/2009
"Lord Byron's "Memoirs" were burned by his publisher, an evil act undertaken for the best of motives. William Gifford said they where 'fit for the brothel and would have damned Lord Byron to everlasting infamy,' which naturally makes me want to read them even more."
-- Stephen Marche, in the Wall Street Journal 4/18-19/2009
"Censorship is less about content and much more about communication and control."
-- Eric Nuzum, in Parental Advisory
"Censorship has less to do with defining appropriate expression than it does with defining appropriate people."
-- Eric Nuzum, in Parental Advisory
"Once speech could be printed, it became a commodity, to be controlled and manipulated on the basis of religion, politics, or profit."
-- Herbert N. Foerstel, in Banned in the U.S.A. (Revised and Expanded Edition)
"The most spectacular international act of bookbanning in the twentieth century was surely Iran's death sentence on the British author Salman Rushdie... Rushdie went into hiding in 1989 when his novel The Satanic Verses offended Iran's Ayatollah Khomeini, who called for his execution and placed a $1 million bounty on his head. The Tehran underground publisher of The Satanic Verses had already been killed."
-- Herbert N. Foerstel, in Banned in the U.S.A. (Revised and Expanded Edition)
"There are worse crimes than burning books. One of them is not reading them."
--Joseph Brodsky, Nobel Laureate
"If there is a bedrock principle underlying the First Amendment, it is that the Government may not prohibit the expression of an idea simply because society finds the idea itself offensive or disagreeable."
--U.S. Supreme Court Justice William Brennan
"Congress shall make no law respecting an establishment of religion, or prohibiting thereof; or abridging the freedom of speech, or of the press; or the right of the people peaceably to assemble, and to petition the government for a redress of grievances."
--The First Amendment to the United States Constitution
"I hate that Americans are taught to fear some books and some ideas as though they were diseases..."
--Kurt Vonnegut
"There is more than one way to burn a book. And the world is full of people running about with lit matches."
--Ray Bradbury
"A word to the unwise. Torch every book. Char every page. Burn every word to ash. Ideas are incombustible. And therein lies your real fear."
--Ellen Hopkins
"Censorship is telling a man he can't have a steak just because a baby can't chew it."
--Mark Twain
"The books that the world calls immoral are books that show the world its own shame."
--Lord Henry in The Picture of Dorian Gray by Oscar Wilde
"Think for yourselves and let others enjoy the privilege to do so, too."
--from Voltaire's Essay on Tolerance
"Banning books is just another form of bullying. It's all about fear and an assumption of power. The key is to address the fear and deny the power."
--James Howe
"Yes, books are dangerous. They should be dangerous - they contain ideas."
--Pete Hautman
"Where they have burned books, they will end in burning human beings."
--In Almansor: A Tragedy by Heinrich Heine