The Quotable Banned Books Week

The quotes and quips about freerdom of speech and banned books

Oct 3, 2006 Leslie Poston

Quips, quotes and other tidbits from real people talking about freedom of speech and other htings related to banned books and Banned Books Week.

With thanks to the ALA, Bartlett's Famous Quotations and Quotable.

"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."-Alfred Whitney Griswold, Essays on Education

"First Amendment freedoms are most in danger when the government seeks to control thought or to justify its laws for that impermissible end. The right to think is the beginning of freedom, and speech must be protected from the government because speech is the beginning of thought."-Supreme Court Justice Anthony M. Kennedy, Ashcroft V. Free Speech Coalition (00-795) 198 F.3d 1083, affirmed.

"Before the week is out, be a patriot: Encourage a child to fall in love with a book. Apply for a library card. And accept the ALA's invitation to Let Freedom Read."-Linda Campbell, Star-Telegram Staff Writer, "Here's a novel thought: Don't restrict books"

"If large numbers of people believe in freedom of speech, there will be freedom of speech, even if the law forbids it. But if public opinion is sluggish, inconvenient minorities will be persecuted, even if laws exist to protect them."-George Orwell, author, c. 1945

"For if we are observed in all matters, we are constantly under threat of correction, judgment, criticism, even plagiarism of our own uniqueness. We become children, fettered under watchful eyes, constantly fearful that-either now or in the uncertain future-patterns we leave behind will be brought back to implicate us, by whatever authority has now become focused upon our once-private and innocent acts. We lose our individuality, because everything we do is observable and recordable."-The Eternal Value of Privacyby Bruce Schneier

Outside, even through the shut window pane, the world looked cold. Down in the street little eddies of wind were whirling dust and torn paper into spirals, and though the sun was shining and the sky a harsh blue, there seemed to be no color in anything except the posters that were plastered everywhere. The black-mustachio'd face gazed down from every commanding corner. There was one on the house front immediately opposite. BIG BROTHER IS WATCHING YOU, the caption said, while the dark eyes looked deep into Winston's own. Down at street level another poster, torn at one corner, flapped fitfully in the wind, alternately covering and uncovering the single word INGSOC. In the far distance a helicopter skimmed down between the roofs, hovered for an instant like a bluebottle, and darted away again with a curving flight. It was the Police Patrol, snooping into people's windows. The patrols did not matter, however. Only the Thought Police mattered.-George Orwell, 1984

"I don't want to be shut out from the truth. If they ban books, they might as well lock us away from the world."-Rory Edwards, 12, Washington Post, Getting It Down at Writing Camp

"A popular government, without popular information, or the mean of acquiring it, is but a prologue to a farce or a tragedy; or perhaps both. Knowledge will forever govern ignorance; and a people who mean to be their own governors must arm themselves with the power which knowledge gives."-James Madison

"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

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