Felice Picano Quotes

Every burned book or house enlightens the world; every suppressed or expunged word reverberates through the earth from side to side.

We can't let censorship take over.

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

A state of society where men may not speak their minds cannot long endure.

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

Some people still believe you should just fall in line with what's going on - and that's scary. It makes a mockery of freedom of speech.

I do not favor the gag order.

When a truth is not given complete freedom, freedom is not complete.

These cartoons are an unnecessary abuse of freedom of speech.

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

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

Those who want to burn books are either afraid of the ideas contained within the covers or they haven't the courage to stand up for the views which they themselves profess to hold.

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

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

While the debate over banned books usually seems to happen just outside the gates of government, it takes on a new danger and urgency when legislators get involved. Their actions cause voices to be silenced both inside and outside the books. That's un-American.

I prefer a little free speech to no free speech at all; but how many have free speech or the chance or the mind for it; and is not free speech here as elsewhere clamped down on in ratio of its freedom and danger?

There are social restrictions where someone could be suppressing someone else's freedom to express themselves.

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.

To silence criticism is to silence freedom.

If all printers were determined not to print anything till they were sure it would offend nobody, there would be very little printed.

If we don't believe in freedom of expression for people we despise, we don't believe in it at all.

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 don't like being forced to reduce my thoughts to sound bites.

It's very worrying at this time in the world that any point of view should be prohibited, that's banned, there are heretics that should be burned at the stake.

Freedom of speech and thought matters, especially when it is speech and thought with which we disagree. The moment the majority decides to destroy people for engaging in thought it dislikes, thought crime becomes a reality.