Kurt Vonnegut Quotes

Suppressing ideas never makes them go away.

Freedom of expression must be considered sacred and thought can only be corrected by counter thought.

The first condition of progress is the removal of censorship.

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

I believe in a free market of ideas and not shying away from debate.

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

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.

The only valid censorship of ideas is the right of people not to listen.

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.

Do not use power to suppress opinions you think pernicious, for if you do the opinions will suppress you.

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

I have always believed in the marketplace of ideas.

Orwell says straight, look, in England what comes out in a free country is not very different from this totalitarian monster that I'm describing in the book. It's more or less the same. How come in a free country? He has two sentences, which are pretty accurate. One, he says, the press is owned by wealthy men who have every reason not to want certain ideas to be expressed. And second - and I think this is much more important - a good education instills in you the intuitive understanding that there are certain things it just wouldn't do to say.

Liberty of thought soon shrivels without freedom of expression. Nor can truth be pursued in an atmosphere hostile to the endeavor or under dangers which are hazarded only by heroes.

Men of ideas vanish when freedom vanishes.

It is only on the battlefield of ideas that the best ones can be recognized and ultimately prevail. Only those afraid of the truth seek to silence debate, intimidate those with whom they disagree, or slander their ideological counterparts. Those who know they are right have no reason to stifle debate because they realize that all opposing arguments will ultimately be overcome by fact.

Today in many western countries, nobody dares question the Holocaust whose nature is questionable. According to the reports I have received, in America if people decide to write something against homosexuality on the basis of psychological and sociological principles, they will be prevented from publishing their work. How is it that these people feel obligated to respect freedom of expression?

The policy of the repression of ideas cannot work and never has worked. The alternative to it is the long difficult road of education. To this the American people have committed.

Under the First Amendment there is no such thing as a false idea. However pernicious an opinion may seem, we depend for its correction not on the conscience of judges and juries but on the competition of other ideas.

It is our attitude toward free thought and free expression that will determine our fate. There must be no limit on the range of temperate discussion, no limits on thought. No subject must be taboo. No censor must preside at our assemblies.

It is impossible for ideas to compete in the marketplace if no forum for their presentation is provided or available.

So long as there is any subject which men may not freely discuss, they are timid upon all subjects.

The taboos that I have mentioned are extraordinarily harsh and numerous. They stand around nearly every subject that is genuinely important to man: they hedge in free opinion and experimentation on all sides. Consider, for example, the matter of religion. It is debated freely and furiously in almost every country in the world save the United States, but here the critic is silenced. The result is that all religions are equally safeguarded against criticism, and that all of them lose vitality. We protect the status quo, and so make steady war upon revision and improvement.

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.

I hate it that Americans are taught to fear some books and some ideas as though they were diseases.