Quotes on Freedom To Read

Knowledge will forever govern ignorance; and a people who mean to be their own governors must arm themselves with the power which knowledge gives.

Only the suppressed word is dangerous.

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.

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.

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

[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.

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.

Books won't stay banned. They won't burn. Ideas won't go to jail.

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

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.

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

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

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.

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

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