QuoteProject
God forbid that any book should be banned. The practice is as indefensible as infanticide.
Rebecca West
ShareWTF𝕏

Interpretation

What this quote means

Banning books is morally wrong and should be vehemently opposed.

In this quote, Rebecca West emphasizes the fundamental importance of freedom of expression and access to literature. She equates the act of banning books with an extreme moral injustice, suggesting that such practices stifle knowledge, creativity, and the fundamental rights of individuals to engage with ideas and narratives.

Themes

BooksCensorshipFreedomExpressionKnowledgeMorality

In practice

Example use cases

During a speech about the importance of literary freedom.

More from Rebecca West

A strong hatred is the best lamp to bear in our hands as we go over the dark places of life, cutting away the dead things men tell us to revere.
Rebecca WestRead
works of art feel towards human beings exactly as we do towards ghosts. The transparency of spectres, the diffuseness in space which lets them drift through doors and walls, and their smell of death, disgust us not more than we disgust works of art by our meaninglessness, our diffuseness in time which lets us drift through three score years and ten without a quarter as much significance as a picture establishes instantaneously.
Rebecca WestRead
I wonder if we are all wrong about each other, if we are just composing unwritten novels about the people we meet?
Rebecca WestRead
All good biography, as all good fiction, comes down to the study of original sin, of our inherent disposition to choose death when we ought to choose life.
Rebecca WestRead
It's my profession to bring people from various outlying districts of the mind to the normal. There seems to be a general feeling it's the place where they ought to be. Sometimes I don't see the urgency myself.
Rebecca WestRead
She did not suddenly start being disagreeable this afternoon, she was so good at it, she had evidently practised whatever are the scales and arpeggios of rudeness every day of her life.
Rebecca WestRead

Similar quotes

Tell them stories. They need the truth you must tell them true stories, and everything will be well, just tell them stories.
Philip PullmanRead
I strongly recommend that students with autism get involved in special interest clubs in some of the areas they naturally excel at. Being with people who share your interests makes socializing easier.
Temple GrandinRead
Read widely and with discrimination. Bad writing is contagious.
P. D. JamesRead
When you work with kids, especially, you want to be ready to turn the camera on at a moment's notice.
Clint EastwoodRead
For the mind does not require filling like a bottle, but rather, like wood, it only requires kindling to create in it an impulse to think independently and an ardent desire for the truth.
PlutarchRead
English, as a subject, never really got over its upstart nature. It tries to bulk itself up with hopeless jargon and specious complexity, tries to imitate subjects it can never be.
Zadie SmithRead

A little wisdom, now and then

Subscribe for the occasional hand-picked quote. No noise.