This page is dedicated to author Salman Rushdie

"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

Hear Churchill attack censorship in pre-WWII Europe in audio!
242kb *.wav

"...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

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