Freedom To Read Quotes:

But libraries are about freedom. Freedom to read, freedom of ideas, freedom of communication. They are about education (which is not a process that finishes the day we leave school or university), about entertainment, about making safe spaces, and about access to information.

- Neil Gaiman

topic: Communication, School, Ideas, Freedom To Read, Access To Information

Having the freedom to read and the freedom to choose is one of the best gifts my parents ever gave me.

- Judy Blume

source: FaceBook post by Judy Blume from Oct 16, 2014

topic: Parent, Freedom To Choose, Best Gift, Freedom To Read

Without Freedom of thought there can be no such thing as wisdom;and no such thing as public liberty, without freedom of speech.

- Benjamin Franklin

topic: Wisdom, Freedom, Patriotic, Liberty Of Speech, Limiting Freedom Of Expression

Banning books gives us silence when we need speech. It closes our ears when we need to listen. It makes us blind when we need sight.

- Stephen Chbosky

topic: Book, Sight, Giving, Banned Books, Censoring

[I]t's not just the books under fire now that worry me. It is the books that will never be written. The books that will never be read. And all due to the fear of censorship. As always, young readers will be the real losers.

- Judy Blume

topic: Real, Book, Fire, Banned Books, Censored

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

source: 1822; cited in U.S. Senate, Alleged Assassination Plots (1975).

topic: Education, Wisdom, Knowledge, Knowledge And Ignorance, Knowledge Education

Never doubt that a small group of thoughtful, committed citizens can change the world; indeed, it's the only thing that ever has.

- Margaret Mead

source: Margaret Mead, Robert B. Textor (2005). “The World Ahead: An Anthropologist Anticipates the Future”, p.12, Berghahn Books

topic: Inspirational, Life, Friendship, Social Democracy, Social Entrepreneurship

Yes, books are dangerous. They should be dangerous - they contain ideas.

- Pete Hautman

topic: Book, Ideas, Censorship, Banned Books, Freedom To Read

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

Free speech is the whole thing, the whole ball game. Free speech is life itself.

- Salman Rushdie

topic: Games, Balls, Speech, Freedom Of Expression, Limiting Freedom Of Expression

He that would make his own liberty secure, must guard even his enemy from oppression; for if he violates this duty, he establishes a precedent that will reach to himself.

- Thomas Paine

topic: Pain, Freedom, Fear, Independence And Freedom, Independence Day Patriotic

The Library is an open sanctuary. It is devoted to individual intellectual inquiry and contemplation. Its function is to provide free access to ideas and information. It is a haven of privacy, a source of both cultural and intellectual sustenance for the individual reader. Since it is thus committed to free and open inquiry on a personal basis, the Library must remain open, with access to it always guaranteed.

- Robert G. Vosper

topic: Ideas, Intellectual, Library, Freedom To Read

Crankish attacks on the freedom to read are common at present. When backed and coordinated by organized groups, they become sinister.

- Ursula K. Le Guin

source: Ursula K. Le Guin (1997). “Dancing at the Edge of the World: Thoughts on Words, Women, Places”, p.124, Grove Press

topic: Groups, Common, Sinister, Freedom 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

Experience should teach us to be most on our guard to protect liberty when the Government's purposes are beneficent. Men born to freedom are naturally alert to repel invasion of their liberty by evil-minded rulers. The greatest dangers to liberty lurk in the insidious encroachment by men of zeal, well meaning but without understanding.

- Louis D. Brandeis

source: Olmstead v. United States (dissenting opinion) (1928)

topic: Freedom, Men, Evil, Beneficence, Lurking

They who can give up essential liberty to obtain a little temporary safety deserve neither liberty nor safety.

- Benjamin Franklin

topic: Inspirational, Happiness, Peace, Social Democracy, Power Corruption

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

topic: Book, Locks, World, Freedom To Read

Censorship is the child of fear and the father of ignorance.

- Laurie Halse Anderson

topic: Children, Father, Ignorance, Banned Books, Censored

Congress shall make no law respecting an establishment of religion, or prohibiting the free exercise thereof.

- James Madison

source: Virginia. General Assembly. House of Delegates, J. W. Randolph, James Madison (1850). “The Virginia Report of 1799-1800: Touching the Alien and Sedition Laws; Together with the Virginia Resolutions of December 21, 1798, Including the Debate and Proceedings Thereon in the House of Delegates of Virginia and Other Documents Illustrative of the Report and Resolutions”, p.136

topic: Exercise, Secular Society, Law, Redress, Founding

Experience teaches us to be most on our guard to protect liberty when the government's purposes are beneficent.

- Louis D. Brandeis

topic: Government, Liberty, Purpose, Justice Truth, Law Courts

If all mankind minus one were of one opinion, mankind would be no more justified in silencing that one person than he, if he had the power, would be justified in silencing mankind.

- John Stuart Mill

source: On Liberty ch. 2 (1859)

topic: Freedom, Civil Rights, Would Be, Freedom Of Expression, Liberty Of Speech

Once a government is committed to the principle of silencing the voice of opposition, it has only one way to go, and that is down the path of increasingly repressive measures, until it becomes a source of terror to all its citizens and creates a country where everyone lives in fear.

- Harry S. Truman

source: United States. President (1945-1953 : Truman), Harry S. Truman (1961). “Harry S. Truman: Containing the Public Messages, Speeches, and Statements of the President, 1945-53”

topic: Country, Government, Voice, Police State, Freedom To Read

We should build respect and understanding between the diverse cultures of the world. We should help construct communities where people of different backgrounds can live together as neighbors. Freedom is something for which we must fight, not by limiting it but by strengthening it.

- Alexandra Byrne

topic: Fighting, People, Community, Diverse Cultures, Cultures Of The World

Whoever would overthrow the liberty of a nation must begin by subduing the freeness of speech.

- Benjamin Franklin

source: Andrew M. Allison, Willard Cleon Skousen, M. Richard Maxfield, Benjamin Franklin (1982). “The Real Benjamin Franklin”

topic: Freedom, Independent, Science, Freedom Of The Press, Liberty Of Speech

Give me the liberty to know, to utter, and to argue freely according to conscience, above all liberties.

- John Milton

source: 'Areopagitica' (1644) p. 34

topic: Freedom, Giving, Liberty, Freedom Of Expression, Intellectual Freedom

Only the suppressed word is dangerous.

- Ludwig Borne

topic: Dangerous, Freedom To Read

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.

- Anthony Kennedy

source: Ashcroft v. Free Speech Coalition, 535 U.S. 234, 2002.

topic: Thinking, Government, Law, Freedom To Read, First Amendment

The Constitution exists precisely so that opinions and judgments, including esthetic and moral judgments about art and literature, can be formed, tested, and expressed. What the Constitution says is that these judgments are for the individual to make, not for the Government to decree, even with the mandate or approval of a majority. Technology expands the capacity to choose; and it denies the potential of this revolution if we assume the Government is best positioned to make these choices for us.

- Anthony Kennedy

topic: Art, Technology, Government, Moral Judgment, Freedom To Read

God forbid that any book should be banned. The practice is as indefensible as infanticide.

- Rebecca West

source: The Strange Necessity (1928) "The Tosh Horse"

topic: Funny, Sarcastic, Women, Infanticide, Banned

If there be time to expose through discussion the falsehood and fallacies, to avert the evil by the processes of education, the remedy to be applied is more speech, not enforced silence.

- Louis D. Brandeis

source: Whitney v. California (concurring opinion) (1927) See OliverWendell Holmes, Jr. 29

topic: Evil, Silence, Speech, Freedom Of Expression, Free Expression

Every legislative limitation upon utterance, however valid, may in a particular case serve as an inroad upon the freedom of speech which the Constitution protects.

- Stanley Forman Reed

topic: Freedom Of Speech, Utterance, May, Freedom To Read

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.

- William O. Douglas

source: "The One Un-American Act". William O. Douglas' speech to the Author's Guild Council in New York on receiving the 1951 Lauterbach Award, December 3, 1952.

topic: Speech, Civil Rights, Defeat, American Revolution, Intellectual Freedom

Freedom to differ is not limited to things that do not matter much. That would be a mere shadow of freedom. The test of its substance is the right to differ as to things that touch the heart of the existing order.

- Robert H. Jackson

source: West Virginia State Bd. of Educ. v. Barnette (1943)

topic: Freedom, Heart, Order, Freedom To Read

[Confiscating a book and punishing its author] is a sign that one does not have a good case, or at least doesn't trust it enough to defend it with reasons and refute the objections. Some people even go so far as to consider prohibited or confiscated books to be the best ones of all, for the prohibition indicates that their authors wrote what they really thought rather than what they were supposed to think . . .

- Laszlo Radvanyi

topic: Book, Thinking, People, Objections, Freedom To Read

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.

- William J. Brennan

source: "Texas v. Johnson, 491 U.S. 397". 1989.

topic: Expression, Ideas, Government, Liberty Of Speech, Flag Burning

One thing about having mostly absent parents that I think was perhaps "good" for the development of my intellect/writing is that I was given almost total freedom to read/write/look at whatever I wanted. I wonder a lot about how my past experiences, particularly my negative childhood (home life and being severely bullied/ostracized throughout school) as formed my/my thoughts/my writing, though I should also note those things were far from the only thing that had an impact on me/my writing.

- Marie Calloway

source: Source: therumpus.net

topic: Home, Writing, School, Childhood Home, Freedom To Read

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.

- Bruce Schneier

topic: Children, Eye, Individuality, Uncertain Future, Freedom To Read