Areopagitica Quotes

“Ye cannot make us now lesse capable, lesse knowing, lesse eagarly pursuing of the Truth, unlesse ye first make yourselves that made us so, lesse the lovers, lesse the founders of our true Liberty. We can grow ignorant again, brutish, formall, and slavish as ye found us, but you then must first become that which ye cannot be, oppressive, arbitrary, and tyrannous as they were from whom ye have free'd us.”
― John Milton, Areopagitica

“I fear yet this iron yoke of outward conformity hath left a slavish print upon our necks: the ghost of a linnen decency yet haunts us.”
― John Milton, Areopagitica

“He who thinks we are to pitch our tent here, and have attained the utmost prospect of reformation that the mortal glass wherein we contemplate can show us, till we come to beatific vision, that man by this very opinion declares that he is yet far short of truth.”
― John Milton

“Who kills a man kills a reasonable creature, God’s image, but he who destroys a good book, kills reason itself, kills the image of God, as it were in the eye.”
― John Milton, Areopagitica

“If we think to regulat Printing, thereby to rectifie manners, we must regulat all recreations and pastimes, all that is delightfull to Man.”
― John Milton, Areopagitica

“...know, that so far to distrust' the judgement and the honesty of one who hath but a common repute in Learning and never yet offended, as not to count him fit to print his mind without a tutor and examiner lest he should drop a schism or something of corruption, is the greatest displeasure and indignity to a free and knowing spirit that can be put upon him.”
― John Milton, Areopagitica

“And what doe they tell us vainly of new opinions, when this very opinion of theirs, that none must be heard but whom they like, is the worst and newest opinion of all others, and is the chief cause why sects and schisms doe so much abound and true knowledge is kept at distance from us ; besides yet a greater danger which is in it.”
― John Milton, Areopagitica

“Truth and understanding are not such wares as to be monopolized and traded in by tickets and statutes and standards.”
― John Milton, Areopagitica