Thomas Jefferson Quotes

Banning books is just another form of bullying. It's all about fear and an assumption of power. The key is to address the fear and deny the power.

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.

The radios are going to dictate. That's another fight. That's another story there. I wish they just let it be.

Dictators are as scared of books as they are of cannon.

The French are nice people. I allow them to sing and to write, and they allow me to do whatever I like.

Every censorship, however good its intent, degenerates inevitably into tyranny.

I believe in limited government. I believe that government should be limited in many ways, …. No government has the right to decide on the truth of scientific principles, nor to prescribe in any way the character of the questions investigated. Neither may a government determine the aesthetic value of artistic creations, nor limit the forms of literacy or artistic expression. Nor should it pronounce on the validity of economic, historic, religious, or philosophical doctrines. Instead it has a duty to its citizens to maintain the freedom, to let those citizens contribute to the further adventure and the development of the human race

People like to quiet the speech of others.

I am against censorship. I don't think there is anything more stupid than censorship.

[The founding fathers] believed that freedom of expression included religious views and beliefs, so long as the government did not force people to worship in a particular matter and remain neutral on what those views and beliefs were.

Storytellers are a threat. They threaten all champions of control, they frighten usurpers of the right-to-freedom of the human spirit -- in state, in church or mosque, in party congress, in the university or wherever.

Censoring books that deal with difficult, adolescent issues does not protect anybody. Quite the opposite. It leaves kids in the darkness and makes them vulnerable. Censorship is the child of fear and the father of ignorance. Our children cannot afford to have the truth of the world withheld from them

I believe that the most essential element of our defense of freedom is our insistence on speaking out for the cause of religious liberty.

I would like to see the lack of demonization for those of us who stand on sincerely held religious beliefs. It's overdue. That's where you see the demonization of people who stand on their beliefs.

Heretical views arise when the truth is uncertain, and it is only when the truth is uncertain that censorship is invoked.

Depictions or expressions of sex, violence, crime are all permitted virtually without limit; but religion, it seems, never.No wonder many in America seem to believe that the court has become one more inclined to protect pornography than to protect religious expression.

Where books are burned in the end people will be burned too.

What does censorship reveal? It reveals fear.

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.

There's no reason to burn books if you don't read them.

A dreary censorship, and self-censorship, has been imposed on books by the centralization of the book industry.

There is more than one way to burn a book.

I like the free-speech stuff, the political-correctness stuff.

Liberty is meaningless if it is only the liberty to agree with those in power.

While I've found many of the religious shows I've viewed over the years not to be to my liking, or in line with my own beliefs, I've never considered it my place to exert any greater type of censorship than changing the channel, or better yet - turning off the TV completely.