Banned Books Week Quotes

“Censorship is the child of fear and the father of ignorance.”
― Laurie Halse Anderson, Speak

“A word to the unwise.
Torch every book.
Char every page.
Burn every word to ash.
Ideas are incombustible.
And therein lies your real fear.”
― Ellen Hopkins

“Yes, books are dangerous. They should be dangerous - they contain ideas.”
― Pete Hautman

“Banning books gives us silence when we need speech. It closes our ears when we need to listen. It makes us blind when we need sight.”
― Stephen Chbosky

“I hate it that Americans are taught to fear some books and some ideas as though they were diseases.”
― Kurt Vonnegut

“Banning books is just another form of bullying. It's all about fear and an assumption of power. The key is to address the fear and deny the power.”
― James Howe

“Having the freedom to read and the freedom to choose is one of the best gifts my parents ever gave me.”
― Judy Blume

“Well, the man who first translated the bible into English was burned at the stake, and they've been at it ever since. Must be all that adultery, murder and incest. But not to worry. It's back on the shelves.”
― Phyllis Reynolds Naylor

“Censors don’t want children exposed to ideas different from their own. If every individual with an agenda had his/her way, the shelves in the school library would be close to empty.”
― Judy Blume

“I'm not, like, a book guy, but isn't the point of all this book stuff like what Ms. Croft was teaching us -- that unrestricted access to books allows us to be challenged and changed? To learn new things and to critically think about those things and not be afraid of them? To be better than we were before we read them?”
― David Connis, Suggested Reading

“Lolita, light of my life, fire of my loins, my sin, my soul, Lo-lee-ta: the tip of the tongue taking a trip of three steps down the palate to tap, at three, on the teeth.”
― Vladimir Nabokov