Kurt Vonnegut Quotes

Any book worth banning is a book worth reading.

I think it's wrong, ladies and gentlemen, for anybody to to be terrorized out of investigating anything. You have the right to read any book. You have the right to hear any speaker and that includes the vile communist that I'd just as soon gas - but you ought to hear him before we gas him.

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.

A university is supposed to show you ideas that offend you and make you feel uncomfortable,

Few things in life seem more sexy than a banned book.

I would like to save all books, those that are banned, those that are burned, or forgotten with contempt by the mandarins who want to tell us what is good and what is bad. Every book has a soul ... and I believe every book is worth saving from either bigotry or oblivion.

All the excitements of a prohibited book had their usual effect, one of which, as always, is to expose the fact that the censors don't know what they are talking about.

A book is somehow sacred. A dictator can kill and maim people, can sink to any kind of tyranny and only be hated, but when books are burned the ultimate in tyranny has happened. This we cannot forgive.

The book which most deserved to be banned would be a catalog of banned books.

In this age of censorship, I mourn the loss of books that will never be written, I mourn the voices that will be silenced-writers' voices, teachers' voices, students' voices-and all because of fear.

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.

A book which, above all others in the world, should be forbidden, is a catalogue of forbidden books.

I hate the idea of sheltering kids from challenging books. It's just another form of conservative fear that promotes ignorance more than anything else.

Americans may not always live up to the Bill of Rights, but Americans do not ban books.

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

The lawsuits we are seeing today to ostracize and prevent different ideas recall previous eras. We must understand that Islam has given man freedom of thought. Islam's history proves that no one is immune to error except the Prophet.

The long run of history, the censor and the inquisitor have always lost. The only weapon against bad ideas is better ideas.

Local school boards may not remove books from the school library shelves simply because they dislike the ideas contained in those books.

Suppressing ideas never makes them go away.

To limit the press is to insult a nation; to prohibit reading of certain books is to declare the inhabitants to be either fools or slaves: such a prohibition ought to fill them with disdain.

The list of gifted teachers and librarians who find their jobs in jeopardy for defending their students' right to read, to imagine, to question, grows every year.

This generation is frightened of ideas, or at least it's being suppressed.

The enemies of intellectual liberty always try to present their case as a plea for discipline versus individualism. The issue truth-versus-untruth is as far as possible kept in the background.

If you do not like anything in a particular book, then sit and discuss it. Banning a book is not a solution. We have to tackle it ideologically.

There are no wrong books. What's wrong is the fear of them.