Judith Krug Quotes

The First Amendment is national in scope and, as the Supreme Court said in Tinker, it does not stop at the schoolhouse door. Not all children are the same. Is a 17-year-old on the eve of his 18th birthday the same as a five-year-old? It is not the responsibility of librarians, or online content providers for that matter, to determine what is appropriate.

Regardless of the strength of the government's interest [in protecting children,] the level of discourse reaching a mailbox simply cannot be limited to that which would be suitable for a sandbox.

Freedom of expression is freedom of information

Federal money should not be used to give kids access to dirty peep shows.

Where States impose unlawful censorship through filtering and other technologies, the use of encryption and anonymity may empower individuals to circumvent barriers and access information and ideas without the intrusion of authorities. Journalists, researchers, lawyers and civil society rely on encryption and anonymity to shield themselves (and their sources, clients and partners) from surveillance and harassment. The ability to search the web, develop ideas and communicate securely may be the only way in which many can explore basic aspects of identity, such as one’s gender, religion, ethnicity, national origin or sexuality.

It is now well established that the Constitution protects the right to receive information and ideas. ... This right to receive information and ideas, regardless of their social worth, ... is fundamental to our free society.

Criticism of government finds sanctuary in several portions of the 1st Amendment. It is part of the right of free speech. It embraces freedom of the press.

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

Young Egyptians, gazing through the windows of the Internet, have gained a keener sense than many of their elders of the freedoms and opportunities they lack. They have found in social media a way to interact and share ideas, bypassing, in virtual space, the restrictions placed on physical freedom of assembly.

If you don't think a television news show represents the truth, you can turn off your TV. If you don't think a magazine represents the truth, you can cancel your subscription. You have the right to expose yourself to whatever information you want. But to have the government prescribing what the truth is or limiting the information available for the citizen is contrary to the 1st Amendment.

Would you approve of your young sons, young daughters—because girls can read as well as boys—reading this book? Is it a book that you would have lying around in your own house? Is it a book that you would even wish your wife or your servants to read?

It’s one of the basics of librarianship, to respect privacy, to understand that what people read isn’t necessarily what they believe, and to give them the ability to come in and find information without any chilling effect.

If you care for the quality of life in our American democracy, then you have to be for censorship.

With a library you are free, not confined by temporary political climates. It is the most democratic of institutions because no one — but no one at all — can tell you what to read and when and how.

We want parents to have choices. But we never want to let the choice that one parent makes limit the choices that another parent can make.

The standard of what offends 'the common conscience of the community' conflicts ... with the command of the First Amendment. ... Certainly that standard would not be an acceptable one if religion, economics, politics or philosophy were involved. How does it become a constitutional standard when literature treating with sex is concerned? Any test that turns on what is offensive to the community's standards is too loose, too capricious, too destructive of freedom of expression to be squared with the First Amendment. Under that test, juries can censor, suppress, and punish what they don't like, provided the matter relates to 'sexual impurity' or has a tendency to 'excite lustful thoughts.' This is community censorship in one of its worst forms...

Everyone has the right to freedom of opinion and expression; this right includes freedom to hold opinions without interference and to seek, receive and impart information and ideas through any media and regardless of frontiers.

Don't join the book burners. Don't think you are going to conceal faults by concealing evidence that they ever existed. Don't be afraid to go into your library and read every book so long as any document does not offend your own ideas of decency. That should be the only censorship.

Political speech is indispensable to decision-making in a democracy, and this is no less true because the speech comes from a corporation. By taking the right to speak from some and giving it to others, the Government deprives the disadvantaged person or class of the right to use speech to strive to establish worth, standing, and respect for the speaker’s voice. The Government may not by these means deprive the public of the right and privilege to determine for itself what speech and speakers are worthy of consideration. The First Amendment protects speech and speaker, and the ideas that flow from each.

Access to information is a fundamental human right.

Speech is an essential mechanism of democracy, for it is the means to hold officials accountable to the people. [...] The right of citizens to inquire, to hear, to speak, and to use information to reach consensus is a precondition to enlightened self-government and a necessary means to protect it. [...] By taking the right to speak from some and giving it to others, the Government deprives the disadvantaged person or class of the right to use speech to strive to establish worth, standing, and respect for the speaker’s voice. The Government may not by these means deprive the public of the right and privilege to determine for itself what speech and speakers are worthy of consideration. The First Amendment protects speech and speaker, and the ideas that flow from each.

The First Amendment is not a blanket freedom-of-information act. The constitutional newsgathering freedom means the media can go where the public can, but enjoys no superior right of access.

We know that there are children out there whose parents do not take the kind of interest in their upbringing and in their existence that we would wish, but I don't think censorship is ever the solution to any problem, be it societal or be it the kind of information or ideas that you have access to.

Free speech is the whole thing, the whole ball game. Free speech is life itself.

We see book-burning as a crime against humanity: it's intolerable because books represent a kind of freedom to us.