Banned Books Quotes

“What is freedom of expression? Without the freedom to offend, it ceases to exist.”
― Salman Rushdie

“If this nation is to be wise as well as strong, if we are to achieve our destiny, then we need more new ideas for more wise men reading more good books in more public libraries. These libraries should be open to all—except the censor. We must know all the facts and hear all the alternatives and listen to all the criticisms. Let us welcome controversial books and controversial authors. For the Bill of Rights is the guardian of our security as well as our liberty.

[Response to questionnaire in Saturday Review, October 29 1960]”
― John F. Kennedy

“Censorship is the child of fear and the father of ignorance.”
― Laurie Halse Anderson, Speak

“A word to the unwise.
Torch every book.
Char every page.
Burn every word to ash.
Ideas are incombustible.
And therein lies your real fear.”
― Ellen Hopkins

“Censorship and the suppression of reading materials are rarely about family values and almost always about control; About who is
snapping the whip, who is saying no, and who is saying go. Censorship's bottom line is this: if the novel Christine offends me, I don't want just to make sure it's kept from my kid; I want to make sure it's kept from your kid, as well, and all the kids. This bit of intellectual arrogance, undemocratic and as old as time, is best expressed this way: "If it's bad for me and my family, it's bad for everyone's family."

Yet when books are run out of school classrooms and even out of school libraries as a result of this idea, I'm never much disturbed not as a citizen, not as a writer, not even as a schoolteacher . . . which I used to be. What I tell kids is, Don't get mad, get even. Don't spend time waving signs or carrying petitions around the neighborhood. Instead, run, don't walk, to the nearest nonschool library or to the local bookstore and get whatever it was that they banned. Read whatever they're trying to keep out of your eyes and your brain, because that's exactly what you need to know.”
― Stephen King

“If there's one American belief I hold above all others, it's that those who would set themselves up in judgment on matters of what is "right" and what is "best" should be given no rest; that they should have to defend their behavior most stringently. ... As a nation, we've been through too many fights to preserve our rights of free thought to let them go just because some prude with a highlighter doesn't approve of them."

[Bangor Daily News, Guest Column of March 20, 1992]”
― Stephen King

“The important task of literature is to free man, not to censor him, and that is why Puritanism was the most destructive and evil force which ever oppressed people and their literature: it created hypocrisy, perversion, fears, sterility.”
― Anaïs Nin, The Diary of Anaïs Nin, Vol. 4: 1944-1947

“Something will be offensive to someone in every book, so you've got to fight it.”
― Judy Blume

“I hate it that Americans are taught to fear some books and some ideas as though they were diseases.”
― Kurt Vonnegut

“A dangerous book will always be in danger from those it threatens with the demand that they question their assumptions. They'd rather hang on to the assumptions and ban the book.”
― Ursula K. Le Guin, The Wave in the Mind: Talks and Essays on the Writer, the Reader and the Imagination

“The fact is that censorship always defeats its own purpose, for it creates, in the end, the kind of society that is incapable of exercising real discretion. In the long run it will create a generation incapable of appreciating the difference between independence of thought and subservience.”
― Henry Steele Commager

“I myself grew up to be not only a Hero, but also a Writer. When I was an adult, I rewrote A Hero's Guide to Deadly Dragons, and I included not only some descriptions of the various deadly dragon species, and a useful Dragonese Dictionary, but also this story of how the book came to be written in the first place.

This is the book that you are holding in your hands right now.

Perhaps you even borrowed it from a Library?

If so, thank Thor that the sinister figure of the Hairy Scary Librarian is not lurking around a corner, hiding in the shadows, Heart-Slicers at the ready, or that the punishment for your curiosity is not the whirring whine of a Driller Dragon's drill.

You, dear reader, I am sure cannot imagine what it might to be like to live in a world in which books are banned.

For surely such things will never happen in the Future?

Thank Thor that you live in a time and a place where people have the right to live and think and write and read their books in peace, and there are no need for Heroes anymore ...

And spare a thought for those who have not been so lucky.”
― Cressida Cowell, A Hero's Guide to Deadly Dragons

“Although there are those who wish to ban my books because I have used language that is painful, I have chosen to use the language that was spoken during the period, for I refuse to whitewash history. The language was painful and life was painful for many African Americans, including my family.
I remember the pain.”
― Mildred D. Taylor, The Land

“They lived freely among the students, they argued with the men over philosophical, sociological and artistic matters, they were just as good as the men themselves: only better, since they were women.”
― D.H. Lawrence, Lady Chatterley's Lover

“Let’s get one thing out of the way: Mexican immigration is an oxymoron. Mexicans are indigenous. So, in a strange way, I’m pleased that the racist folks of Arizona have
officially declared, in banning me alongside Urrea, Baca, and Castillo, that their anti-immigration laws are also anti-Indian. I’m also strangely pleased that the folks of Arizona
have officially announced their fear of an educated underclass. You give those brown kids some books about brown folks and what happens? Those brown kids change the world. In the effort to vanish our books, Arizona has actually given them enormous power. Arizona has made our books sacred documents now.”
― Sherman Alexie

“Because all books are forbidden when a country turns to terror. The scaffolds on the corners, the list of things you may not read. These things always go together.”
― Philippa Gregory, The Queen's Fool

“I do not believe that any book should be denied to the man who possesses the wisdom to understand it, Bruno, but that does not mean I am confused about where truth lies.”
― S.J. Parris, Heresy

“Keep your nose in a book – and keep other people's noses out of which books you choose to stick your nose into!”
― Art Spiegelman

“You have to be mad in the language you're mad in.”
― Chris Crutcher, Angry Management

“Above all, for his merciless, contemptuous treatment of Clifford Chatterley, blown to bits in Flanders in 1918, Lawrence can be damned to hell. Damned but not banned.”
― Germaine Greer

“Everybody has the right to form their own opinion and read what they like and come to their own conclusion about it... I trust the reader.”
― Philip Pullman

“THANK YOU, AUTHORS! for labouring daily over each word, that allows your beloved readers to become lost in your gift of storytelling. #Authors #FReadom”
― Nansi

“If she herself had had any picture of the future, it had been of a society of animals... all equal... the strong protecting the weak... Instead- She did not know why- they had come to a time when no one dared speak his mind, when fierce, growling dogs roamed everywhere, and when you had to watch your comrades torn to pieces after confessing to shocking crimes.”
― George Orwell, Animal Farm

“There are lessons to be learned from history — but generally those lessons are only known to those who read books, not to those who ban them.”
― Brian Dunning

“Some books are so powerful they intimidate people.”
― Aya Khalil, The Great Banned-Books Bake Sale

“Books are for everyone.
Am I not important?
Am I invisible?
Books make us think.
Books make us imagine.
Books make us compassionate.
Books make us creative.
Books make us love.
You have banned important books, but you can't
ban my words. Books are for
EVERYONE.”
― Aya Khalil, The Great Banned-Books Bake Sale

“The current wave of book banning sweeping the country has created a chilling effect on our education system and the purchasing of books in our libraries, the effects of which will be seen for decades even if we somehow get it under control in the next year. This is a huge movement that has been in the works for a while. It is well funded and well coordinated. It is about marginalizing and erasing cultures and groups of people, it is about defunding public institutions, it is about dumbing down society for a more easily led population, and it is about using libraries for political gain. At the end of the day, the pro-censorship movement is about privatizing education and privatizing libraries for a group of people who are seeking to line their pockets. And to achieve those goals, otherwise well-meaning people have been enlisted in a social movement that goes against everything America stands for. That's the really sad and tragic thing.”
― Amanda Jones, That Librarian: The Fight Against Book Banning in America

“These people decry government overreach as they try to use the government to dictate what citizens can and cannot read.”
― Amanda Jones, That Librarian: The Fight Against Book Banning in America

“If somebody is telling you there is one history, one people & one version of events, you should consider what side of history that they're on.”
― Sara Ellie MacKenzie

“The choices you have for your children are not the same as mine. For me, there is no such thing as a banned book. Ideas are meant to be explored, understood & learned from. My son will always be able to read any book. You can't regulate that.”
― Sara Ellie MacKenzie