Lois Lowry Quotes

Madeleine L'Engle's 'A Wrinkle in Time' has been targeted by censors for promoting New Ageism, and Mark Twain's 'Adventures of Huckleberry Finn' for promoting racism. Gee, where does that leave the kids?

There are worse crimes than burning books. One of them is not reading them.

This is a nation that has lost the ability to be self-critical, and that makes a lie out of the freedoms.

Let's not let cartoonists get involved in a war of any kind, except for a war against stupidity.

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 who write letters to the editor are idiots.

Brown’s core value of promoting the free and open exchange of ideas is bedrock to our capacity to fulfill our mission as a university. This value applies not only when ideas are agreeable and aligned with our own. Protecting the right to free expression and promoting open discourse is even more essential when ideas are divergent, abhorrent or even hurtful.

If in other lands the press and books and literature of all kinds are censored, we must redouble our efforts here to keep them free..

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

I think there's a difference between calling people out and understanding the role that the press plays in a free society.

The publishing of a book is a worldwide event. The attempt to suppress a book is a worldwide event.

It just worries me that if we start trying to erase history that we can learn from, where does that end? Do you start taking away books people find offensive? It's just a path that seems very dangerous to me in this country.

Don't join the book burners... Don't be afraid to go in your library and read every book.

[T]he German censorship forbade or mutilated my every book, which was like sticking pins into my soul.

Conservatives should defend free speech - but we must not amplify it when it's blatantly grotesque.

We have freedom of speech, and anybody's idea can't be a fact.

If there are places where I didn't feel comfortable with the particular politics, then I just couldn't do a concert there.

We must not fall into the trap of thinking speech that offends is speech that must be forbidden. A healthy culture demands that much of us, to equip the next generation of Americans with the knowledge and reason they will need to confront an uncertain future.

None of us believes in an untrammelled right to free speech. We all agree there are always going to be lines that, for the purposes of law and order, cannot be crossed; or for the purposes of taste and decency, should not be crossed. We differ only on where those lines should be drawn.

If you start censoring what you're interested in for the audience, you don't give the audience enough credit.

One thing that N.W.A did, as Larry Flynt did before them, was to expand the boundaries of our reliance upon the good sense of the people to determine what's right and what isn't, what's obscene and what isn't, and what's immoral and what isn't.

Young adult author Richelle Mead holds the distinction to perhaps be the only author ever to have a book banned... before it was even written.

As editor, I think we need to act more decisively on what kind of material appears on the 'Guardian'. Those who argue that this is an affront to freedom of speech miss the point. That freedom counts for little if it is used to silence others.

[I]t's not just the books under fire now that worry me. It is the books that will never be written. The books that will never be read. And all due to the fear of censorship. As always, young readers will be the real losers.

It might be crazy to expect a high government official to speak the truth. It might be crazy to believe that government policy will be something more than the handmaiden of the most powerful interests. It might be crazy to argue that we should preserve a tradition that has been part of our tradition for most of our history -- free culture. If this is crazy, then let there be more crazies. Soon.