Brin-Jonathan Butler Quotes

Alas, how many have been persecuted for the wrong of having been right?

Heretics have been hated from the beginning of recorded time; they have been ostracized, exiled, tortured, maimed, and butchered; but it has generally proved impossible to smother them; and when it has not, the society that has succeeded has always declined.

The oppression of any people for opinion's sake has rarely had any other effect than to fix those opinions deeper, and render them more important.

The philosopher has never killed any priests, whereas the priest has killed a great many philosophers.

I think that when we start thought-policing people and idea-policing people, then that's crossing a line. And I think, you know, everybody's so afraid of this imaginary line of thought police that they forget their own personal safety.

Our schools too often want to shut people up so they can't talk about real solutions. People who think differently tend to clam up because they think something is wrong with their ideas.

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

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

If I were to say what I really think I would be arrested or shut away in a lunatic asylum. Come on, I am sure that it would be the same for everyone.

Children say that people are hung sometimes for speaking the truth.

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

Free expression is the base of human rights, the root of human nature and the mother of truth. To kill free speech is to insult human rights, to stifle human nature and to suppress truth.

It is dangerous to speak the truth to tyrants.

In the long run of history, the censor and the inquisitor have always lost. The only sure weapon against bad ideas is better ideas. The source of better ideas is wisdom. The surest path to wisdom is a liberal education.

People are hung sometimes for speaking the truth.

... the greatest discouragement and affront that can be offered to learning and to learned men .... More than if some enemy at sea should stop up all our havens and ports, it [licensing] hinders and retards importation of our richest Merchandise, Truth.

Faith should be defended, by legal edicts, from the efforts of all who seek to contradict it, and that whatever ideas have arisen through the influence of error, be removed by legal proceedings; therefore, we decree that no man of whatever race or lineage, either native or foreigner, proselyte or old in faith, visitor or resident, shall openly or silently, impugn the unity of the Catholic faith; or take part in any injurious disputes affecting the truth of said faith; or countenance the same by remaining silent." No one shall attack the decrees of the Gospel, or criticize the institutions of the Church, or call in question the sacred institutions established by the ancient Fathers; no one shall treat with contempt discussions concerning points of doctrine which arise in modern assemblies, no one shall entertain any thoughts against the holy edicts or the true religion, or shall utter any words in depreciation of the same; or perfidiously cause a controversy to arise with an obstinate unbeliever; or engage in a quarrel on account of the contempt of honor exhibited by a listener. Any person who violates any of the provisions aforesaid shall be arrested; and should he be an ecclesiastic, or belong to any religious order, he shall lose his rank and dignity, shall be regarded forever as a criminal; and shall be punished by the loss of all his property. If he should belong to the laity, he shall be deprived of honor and position, and stripped of all his possessions. Every violator of this law shall be condemned to perpetual exile, unless he should be converted from his errors by the interposition of Divine mercy, when he may be suffered to remain and live in accordance with the commands of God.

It is pretty safe to assume that any given censor is a fool. The very fact that he is a censor indicates that.

The punishment for new thought or expressing a different opinion is death

Once you get used to censorship, sometimes you self-censor.

There are so many people that are offended by debate and free speech that sometimes governments cower. It's just way easier to play into the hands of people who are totalitarian.

Again and again there comes a time in history when the man who dares to say that two and two make four is punished with death. ("The Plague")

Persecution for opinion is the master vice of society.

If the man doesn't believe as we do, we say he is a crank, and that settles it. I mean, it does nowadays, because now we can't burn him.

The whole drift of our law is toward the absolute prohibition of all ideas that diverge in the slightest form from the accepted platitudes, and behind that drift of law there is a far more potent force of growing custom, and under that custom there is a natural philosophy which erects conformity into the noblest of virtues and the free functioning of personality into a capital crime against society.