Book Banning Quotes

“The objection to fairy stories is that they tell children there are dragons, but children have always known there are dragons. Fairy stories tell children that dragons can be killed.”
― G.K. Chesterton

“But if we want to change the world so it's good for everyone, it's important to talk about the truth.”
― Amy Sarig King, Attack of the Black Rectangles

“Funny how if you were reading his dystopian sci-fi novel with a minor subplot about fascists ruling Korea, you'd be taken to jail. So you gotta wonder. Do they ban books because they see danger in their authors, or because they see themselves in their villains?”
― Kim Hyun Sook, Banned Book Club

“Those who seek to ban books are never on the right side of history. Never.”
― Jon Rosenthal

“Harmful literature is more useful than useful literature, for it is antientropic, it is a means of combating calcification. ...It is utopian, absurd. ...It is right 150 years later.'

-from 'On Literature, Revolution, Entropy and Other Matters' as read in the introduction to Mirra Ginsburg's translation of 'We.”
― Yevgeny Zamyatin, We

“Here is how I propose to end book-banning in this country once and for all: Every candidate for school committee should be hooked up to a lie detector and asked this question: “Have you read a book from start to finish since high school?” or “Did you even read a book from start to finish in high school?”

If the truthful answer is “no,” then the candidate should be told politely that he cannot get on the school committee and blow off his big bazoo about how books make children crazy.

Whenever ideas are squashed in this country, literate lovers of the American experiment write careful and intricate explanations of why all ideas must be allowed to live. It is time for them to realize that they are attempting to explain America at its bravest and most optimistic to orangutans.

From now on, I intend to limit my discourse with dimwitted Savonarolas to this advice: "Have somebody read the First Amendment to the United States Constitution out loud to you, you God damned fool!"

Well--the American Civil Liberties Union or somebody like that will come to the scene of trouble, as they always do. They will explain what is in the Constitution, and to whom it applies.

They will win.

And there will be millions who are bewildered and heartbroken by the legal victory, who think some things should never be said--especially about religion.

They are in the wrong place at the wrong time.

Hi ho.”
― Kurt Vonnegut Jr., Palm Sunday: An Autobiographical Collage

“Books and all forms of writing have always been objects of terror to those who seek to suppress truth.”
― Wole Soyinka, The Man Died: The Prison Notes of Wole Soyinka

“I'm sure the only act that sells more books than a good banning is a good burning.”
― Pansy Schneider-Horst

“The words themselves are clean, so are the things to which they apply, but the mind drags in a filthy association. Well, then, cleanse the mind, that is the real job.”
― D.H. Lawrence

“If we want to resist the powers which threaten to suppress intellectual and individual freedom we must keep clearly before us what is at stake, and what we owe to that freedom which our ancestors have won for us after hard struggles.”
― Albert Einstein, Essays in Humanism

“THE BURNING OF THE BOOKS

When the Regime commanded that books with harmful knowledge
Should be publicly burned and on all sides
Oxen were forced to drag cartloads of books
To the bonfires, a banished
Writer, one of the best, scanning the list of the
Burned, was shocked to find that his
Books had been passed over. He rushed to his desk
On wings of wrath, and wrote a letter to those in power.
Burn me! he wrote with flying pen, burn me! Haven't my books
Always reported the truth? And here you are
Treating me like a liar! I command you:
Burn me!”
― Bertolt Brecht

“In reference to book banning, literature is how kids learn the perspectives of others. Essentially, it's how they are able to view the world. How do we expect them to build a better world if we take away their tools?”
― Mailka J. Stevely

“If we opt to mute the voices of the present and those who lived long ago, then the residue of the past is bound to be inherited by our future.”
― Mailka J. Stevely

“America cannot mend if its wounds are constantly covered.”
― Malika J. Stevely, Song of Redemption: A southern historical saga inspired by true events

“Hey Republicans, Don't Trample on Books and Libraries, Un-American Tyrants.”
― D.L. Lewis

“America cannot mend if its wounds are constantly covered and not treated.”
― Malika J. Stevely, Song of Redemption: A southern historical saga inspired by true events

“As libraries become battlegrounds, teens notice which books, and which identities, are under attack. Those who share identities with targeted authors or characters receive a powerful message of exclusion: Those books don't belong, and neither do you.”
― Ashley Hope Pérez

“We look for ourselves in the pages. So to take books off the shelves that contain, for example, LQBTQIA+ characters and lives is extremely damaging, especially for queer teens on the brink of becoming who they are meant to be. It’s essentially saying: ‘This way of living isn’t palatable to us. We don’t accept it. Don’t do it.’ And what could be more painful and distressing than that?”
― Amie Jones

“Books are a way we leave a mark on the world, aren't they? They say we were here, we loved and we grieved and we laughed and we made mistakes and we existed. They can be burned halfway across the world, but the words cannot be unread. They do live on in this library, but more importantly they are immortalized in anyone who has read them.”
― Brianna Labuskes, The Librarian of Burned Books

“Truth is the greatest of all national possessions. A state, a people, a system, which suppresses the truth or fears to publish it, deserves to collapse as rapidly and completely as possible.”
― Kurt Eisner

“Read A Book.

Because If you devalue literature you devalue humanity itself.

Education, thoughts & ideas are the only hopes for a real future that matters.”
― R.M. Engelhardt, OF SPIRIT, ASH & BONE POEMS PARABLES R.M. ENGELHARDT

“Book Bans Are Dumb
(Sonnet 1587)

Book bans are dumb,
It makes the mind numb.
If banning books were justice,
Middle ages would've been fun.

I’ve got Mein Kampf on my shelf,
next to bible, quran and vedanta.
You cannot fathom the wholeness of life,
if you let expansion be dictated by law.

Expansion can't be contained by law,
concocted in the gutter of tribalism.
Burning books doesn't prevent darkness,
It only obstructs illumination.

Book bans are dumb,
it makes the world numb.
Read reason, fiction, the lot -
Stretch your mind beyond medieval vision.”
― Abhijit Naskar, World War Human: 100 New Earthling Sonnets