Book Burning Quotes:

You don't have to burn books to destroy a culture. Just get people to stop reading them.

- Ray Bradbury

source: FaceBook post by Ray Bradbury from Dec 08, 2014

topic: Inspirational, Life, Struggle, Martian Chronicles, Inspirational Reading

Book burnings. Always the forerunners. Heralds of the stake, the ovens, the mass graves.

- Geraldine Brooks

topic: Book, Burning, Stakes, Ovens, Forerunners

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

- Dwight D. Eisenhower

topic: Lying, Book, Thinking, Libraries And Librarians, Banned Books

It hardly matters why a library is destroyed: every banning, curtailment, shredding, plunder or loot gives rise (at least as a ghostly presence) to a louder, clearer, more durable library of the banned, looted, plundered, shredded or curtailed.

- Alberto Manguel

topic: Giving, Library, Matter, Book Burning, Shredding

Books can not be killed by fire. People die, but books never die. No man and no force can abolish memory... In this war, we know, books are weapons. And it is a part of your dedication always to make them weapons for man's freedom.

- Franklin D. Roosevelt

topic: Memories, Freedom, War, Book Burning, Censorship In Books

He who destroys a good book kills reason itself.

- John Milton

source: Areopagitica (1644)

topic: Book, Reading, Reason, Censored, Reading Good Books

The burning of a book is a sad, sad sight, for even though a book is nothing but ink and paper, it feels as if the ideas contained in the book are disappearing as the pages turn to ashes and the cover and binding--which is the term for the stitching and glue that holds the pages together--blacken and curl as the flames do their wicked work. When someone is burning a book, they are showing utter contempt for all of the thinking that produced its ideas, all of the labor that went into its words and sentences, and all of the trouble that befell the author . . .

- Daniel Handler

topic: Book, Sadness, Thinking, Ink And Paper, Book Burning

I am Envy...I cannot read and therefore wish all books burned.

- Christopher Marlowe

topic: Book, Envy, Wish, Faustus, Sweepers

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

- Joseph Brodsky

source: "The Balancing Act: Mastering the Competing Demands of Leadership". Book by Kerry Patterson, Joseph Grenny, Al Switzler and Ron McMillan, 1996.

topic: Book, Reading, Burning, Martian Chronicles, Learning To Read

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 Griswold

source: "Quora: What Does Freedom of Speech Mean?". www.yahoo.com. May 13, 2017.

topic: Running, Book, Ideas, Freedom Of Expression, Liberal Education

There must be something in books, something we can’t imagine, to make a woman stay in a burning house; there must be something there. You don’t stay for nothing.

- Ray Bradbury

source: Ray Bradbury (2016). “Fahrenheit 451”, p.25, Hamilton Books

topic: Book, House, Burning, Fahrenheit 451 Book, Book Burning

Don't join the book burners... Don't be afraid to go in your library and read every book.

- Dwight D. Eisenhower

topic: Book, Reading, Library, Libraries Books And Reading, Censoring

Book burning is a charming old custom, hallowed by antiquity. It has been practiced for centuries by fascists, communists, atheists, school children, rival authors, and tired librarians. Like everything of importance since the invention of the cloak and the shroud, its origins are cloaked in mystery and shrouded in secrecy. Some scholars believe that the first instance of book burning occurred in the Middle Ages, when a monk was trying to illuminate a manuscript. All agree that book burning was almost non-existent during the period when books were made of stone.

- Richard Armour

topic: Atheist, Children, Believe, Book Burning, Shrouds

Don't join the book burners!

- Dwight D. Eisenhower

source: Remarks at Dartmouth College Commencement, Hanover, N.H., 14 June 1953

topic: Book, Library, Censorship, Intellectual Freedom, Libraries And Librarians

My books, at any rate, deserved to be burned.

- Alfred Doblin

topic: Book, Rate, Burned, Book Burning

I am Envy, begotten of a chimney-sweeper and an oyster-wife. I cannot read, and therefore wish all books were burnt; I am lean with seeing others eat - O that there would come a famine through all the world, that all might die, and I live alone; then thou should'st see how fat I would be! But must thou sit and I stand? Come down, with a vengeance!

- Christopher Marlowe

topic: Book, Oysters, Envy, Faustus, Sweepers

Sometimes I want to have a mental book burning that would scour my mind clean of all the filthy visions literature has conjured there. But how to do without 'The Illiad?' How to do without 'Macbeth?

- Geraldine Brooks

topic: Book, Mind, Vision, Book Burning

It was a great place to write a novel about book burning, in the library basement.

- Ray Bradbury

topic: Book, Writing, Library, Book Burning

Shut the door, they're coming through the window, shut the window, they're coming through the door," are the words to an old song. They fit my lifestyle with newly arriving butcher/censors every month. Only six weeks ago, I discovered that, over the years, some cubby-hole editors at Ballantine Books, fearful of contaminating the young, had, bit by bit, censored some 75 separate sections from the novel. Students, reading the novel which, after all, deals with censorship and book-burning in the future, write to tell me of this exquisite irony.

- Ray Bradbury

source: Ray Bradbury (2012). “Fahrenheit 451: A Novel”, p.210, Simon and Schuster

topic: Song, Book, Reading, Book Burning