Lau Quotes

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

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

Those who begin by burning books will end by burning people.

Whenever books are burned men also in the end are burned.

Wherever books are burned, human beings are destined to be burned too.

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

An attempt to scrutinize men’s thoughts and punish their opinions is of all kinds of despotism the most odious: yet this is peculiarly character of a period of revolution.... There is no period more at war with the existence of liberty.

Before Hitler could kill 6 million Jews, he had to burn 6 million books.

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

Whenever one tries to suppress doubt, there is tyranny.

That was only the beginning - where one burns books, one will finally also burn people.

There, where one burns books... one, in the end, burns men.

Where books are burnt, men finish up being burnt too.

Where books are burned in the end people will be burned too.

You know what they say: When people start burning books they'll soon burn human beings.

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.

The burning of an author's books, imprisonment for opinion's sake, has always been the tribute that an ignorant age pays to the genius of its time.

It is a paradox that every dictator has climbed to power on the ladder of free speech. Immediately on attaining power each dictator has suppressed all free speech except his own.

Once you permit those who are convinced of their own superior rightness to censor and silence and suppress those who hold contrary opinions, just at that moment the citadel has been surrendered.

Freedom of speech is always under attack by Fascist mentality, which exists in all parts of the world, unfortunately.

A state that suppresses all freedom of speech, and which by imposing the most terrible punishments, treats each and every attempt at criticism, however morally justified, and every suggestion for improvement as plotting to high treason, is a state that breaks an unwritten law.

The policy of repression of ideas cannot work and has never worked.

History’s most important lesson is that it has not been possible to make coercion compatible with the truth.

One of the best ways of enslaving a people is to keep them from education... The second way of enslaving a people is to suppress the sources of information, not only by burning books but by controlling all the other ways in which ideas are transmitted.