Book Control Quotes

The printing of books is forbidden.

Censorship ends in logical completeness when nobody is allowed to read any books except the books that nobody reads.

Writers ought to be regarded as wrongdoers who deserve to be acquitted or pardoned only in the rarest cases: that would be a way to keep books from getting out of hand.

It is of greatest concernment in the church and commonwealth, to have a vigilant eye how books demean themselves as well as men; and thereafter to confine, imprison, and do sharpest justice on them as malefactors: for books are not absolutely dead things, but do contain a potency of life in them to be as active as that soul was whose progeny they are; nay they do preserve as in a vial the purest efficacy and extraction of that living intellect that bred them.

My main wish is to get my books into other people's rooms, and to keep other people's books out of mine.

I don't like Communism because it hands out wealth through rationing books.

Master books, but do not let them master you. Read to live, not live to read.

Warning stickers on books would be a nightmare.

No presses should be set up or used except those in London and one in the University at Cambridge and one at the University in Oxford. That every printer should within 10 days render an inventory of his implements; upon pain to the delinquent of having the same utterly demolished, and of being imprisoned twelve months … no press should be set up in any obscure place; upon pain to the offender of imprisonment for one year, and also of being disabled forever from using his trade ..:. No new presses should be set up, and that none set up within the six months last past should be used, until their excessive number should have been so reduced as might seem good to the Archbishop of Canterbury and the Bishop of London ; upon pain to the offender of the destruction of his implements, and of imprisonment for a year : That no one should print any book against the meaning of any law of the realm or injunction of her Majesty, nor should any one print any book at all unless the same be first read by the- Archbishop of Canterbury or by, the Bishop of London ; under pain to the printer in either case of being disabled from any practice of printing and of being imprisoned six months: That sellers or binders of any such books should be imprisoned three months: And that the wardens of the Company of Stationers might search for all such books wherever they should have reasonable cause of suspicion, and destroy all presses and other instruments set up or used contrary to the meaning of this decree.

There are certain books that should be taken away from young writers; that should be prised out of their clutching fingers and locked away until they are all grown up and ready to read them without being smitten.