Jan Matthys Quotes

Every book in the City other than the Bible shall be burned..

Censorship is a strange situation. There was times when people would burn books because they didn't like what people were doing.

Wherever they burn books they will also, in the end, burn human beings.

Whenever books are burned men also in the end are burned.

The burning of an author's books, imprisonment for opinion's sake, has always been the tribute that an ignorant age pays to the genius of its time.

Islam has been used in some countries, for instance Sudan, as a means for suppression and the installation of autocratic regimes. This, coupled with the censorship of moderate Muslim voices and increasing state patronage of religious scholars, has led to the propagation of a dogmatic form of divisive Islamic extremism, a form that rejects democracy, human rights, and good governance as devices of Western imperialism.

It was only a generation ago that we learned that the burning of books may precede the burning of people.

We found a large number of these books in these [Mayan] characters and as there contained nothing at all which was not to be superstition and lies of the Devil, we burned them all.

Do not use power to suppress opinions you think pernicious, for if you do the opinions will suppress you.

This was but a prelude; where books are burnt human-beings will be burnt in the end

Where books are burnt, men finish up being burnt too.

Those who begin by burning books will end by burning people.

Ever heard of anyone executed for distributing copies of Grimm's fairy tales? Imagine people trying to smuggle copies of Hans Christian Andersen's works into China? The Bible, which has been called a mere collection of myths has suffered all of these fates: even today, copies of the Bible are banned and burned. There's something about this ancient book that threatens and frightens those in power.

Wherever books are burned, human beings are destined to be burned too.

I've only written one science-fiction book: 'Fahrenheit 451.' That book is a book based on real facts and my hatred of people who destroy books.

Every book that is banned is a badge of honor.

Those nations that say it's a crime to preach your religion are making a terrible mistake. All they're doing is driving underground other forms of spiritual intuitions and practices.

I do respect people's faith, but I don't respect their manipulation of that faith in order to create fear and control.

It is a truism that almost any sect, cult, or religion will legislate its creed into law if it acquires the political power to do so.

And religion causes most of the problems, war, and economics of course, and study your history or you're going to repeat it; and if you're burning a Harry Potter book you need some serious counseling, you don't get it, you're missing the whole point.

When any government, or any church for that matter, undertakes to say to its subjects, This you may not read, this you must not see, this you are forbidden to know, the end result is tyranny and oppression no matter how holy the motives.

Censorship always defeats it own purpose, for it creates in the end the kind of society that is incapable of exercising real discretion.

The greatest threat to freedom is the absence of criticism.

What progress we are making. In the Middle Ages they would have burned me. Now they are content with burning my books.

Once you permit those who are convinced of their own superior rightness to censor and silence and suppress those who hold contrary opinions, just at that moment the citadel has been surrendered.