Books won't stay banned. They won't burn. Ideas won't go to jail.
Alfred Whitney GriswoldRead
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.
Interpretation
What this quote means
The quote emphasizes the resilience of ideas and the importance of education to combat censorship and promote better ideas.
Alfred Whitney Griswold's quote highlights the enduring nature of ideas and the futility of censorship. While books and ideas may face opposition, they ultimately persevere, demonstrating that the best defense against harmful thoughts is the promotion of superior ideas. The quote advocates for a liberal education as the key to gaining wisdom and fostering the development of better ideas that can triumph over negativity and ignorance.
Themes
EducationIdeasCensorshipWisdomLiberal Education
In practice
Example use cases
During a speech about the importance of free thought in education.
More from Alfred Whitney Griswold
All quotes →Self-respect cannot be hunted. It cannot be purchased. It is never for sale. It cannot be fabricated out of public relations. It comes to us when we are alone, in quiet moments, in quiet places, when we suddenly realize that, knowing the good, we have done it; knowing the beautiful, we have served it; knowing the truth we have spoken it
Alfred Whitney GriswoldRead
A college education is not a quantitative body of memorized knowledge salted away in a card file. It is a taste for knowledge, a taste for philosophy, if you will; a capacity to explore, to question to perceive relationships, between fields of knowledge and experience.
Alfred Whitney GriswoldRead
Similar quotes
Teach them the quiet words of kindness, to live beyond themselves. Urge them toward excellence, drive them toward gentleness, pull them deep into yourself, pull them upward toward manhood, but softly like an angel arranging clouds. Let your spirit move through them softly.
Pat ConroyRead
Fortunately or otherwise we live at a time when the average individual has to know several times as much in order to keep informed as he did only thirty or forty years ago. Being "educated" today requires not only more than a superficial knowledge of the arts and sciences, but a sense of inter-relationship such as is taught in few schools. Finally, being "educated" today, in terms of the larger needs, means preparation for world citizenship; in short, education for survival.
Norman CousinsRead
Nothing would please us more than to see our beloved children form the habit of reading the Gospels - not merely from time to time, but every day.
Pope Pius XRead
Those of us who are blamed when old for reading childish books were blamed when children for reading books too old for us.
C. S. LewisRead
Human intelligence is richer and more dynamic than we have been led to believe by formal academic education.
Ken RobinsonRead
I look to the diffusion of light and education as the resource most to be relied on for ameliorating the condition, promoting the virtue and advancing the happiness of man.
Thomas JeffersonRead