Book Banning Quotes

“Those who seek to ban books are never on the right side of history. Never.”
― Jon Rosenthal

“But if we want to change the world so it's good for everyone, it's important to talk about the truth.”
― Amy Sarig King, Attack of the Black Rectangles

“Funny how if you were reading his dystopian sci-fi novel with a minor subplot about fascists ruling Korea, you'd be taken to jail. So you gotta wonder. Do they ban books because they see danger in their authors, or because they see themselves in their villains?”
― Kim Hyun Sook, Banned Book Club

“Here is how I propose to end book-banning in this country once and for all: Every candidate for school committee should be hooked up to a lie detector and asked this question: “Have you read a book from start to finish since high school?” or “Did you even read a book from start to finish in high school?”

If the truthful answer is “no,” then the candidate should be told politely that he cannot get on the school committee and blow off his big bazoo about how books make children crazy.

Whenever ideas are squashed in this country, literate lovers of the American experiment write careful and intricate explanations of why all ideas must be allowed to live. It is time for them to realize that they are attempting to explain America at its bravest and most optimistic to orangutans.

From now on, I intend to limit my discourse with dimwitted Savonarolas to this advice: "Have somebody read the First Amendment to the United States Constitution out loud to you, you God damned fool!"

Well--the American Civil Liberties Union or somebody like that will come to the scene of trouble, as they always do. They will explain what is in the Constitution, and to whom it applies.

They will win.

And there will be millions who are bewildered and heartbroken by the legal victory, who think some things should never be said--especially about religion.

They are in the wrong place at the wrong time.

Hi ho.”
― Kurt Vonnegut Jr., Palm Sunday: An Autobiographical Collage

“Harmful literature is more useful than useful literature, for it is antientropic, it is a means of combating calcification. ...It is utopian, absurd. ...It is right 150 years later.'

-from 'On Literature, Revolution, Entropy and Other Matters' as read in the introduction to Mirra Ginsburg's translation of 'We.”
― Yevgeny Zamyatin, We

“Books and all forms of writing have always been objects of terror to those who seek to suppress truth.”
― Wole Soyinka, The Man Died: The Prison Notes of Wole Soyinka

“There are lessons to be learned from history — but generally those lessons are only known to those who read books, not to those who ban them.”
― Brian Dunning

“THE BURNING OF THE BOOKS

When the Regime commanded that books with harmful knowledge
Should be publicly burned and on all sides
Oxen were forced to drag cartloads of books
To the bonfires, a banished
Writer, one of the best, scanning the list of the
Burned, was shocked to find that his
Books had been passed over. He rushed to his desk
On wings of wrath, and wrote a letter to those in power.
Burn me! he wrote with flying pen, burn me! Haven't my books
Always reported the truth? And here you are
Treating me like a liar! I command you:
Burn me!”
― Bertolt Brecht

“I understand that some parents don't want their teens to read about sex. Those parents need to police their own children's reading and stop policing mine.”
― Amanda Jones, That Librarian: The Fight Against Book Banning in America

“The words themselves are clean, so are the things to which they apply, but the mind drags in a filthy association. Well, then, cleanse the mind, that is the real job.”
― D.H. Lawrence

“If we want to resist the powers which threaten to suppress intellectual and individual freedom we must keep clearly before us what is at stake, and what we owe to that freedom which our ancestors have won for us after hard struggles.”
― Albert Einstein, Essays in Humanism

“People who ban books are pretty much assholes who fear knowledge because knowledge is power.

Just ask the Nazis.”
― R.M. Engelhardt, WHERE THERE IS NO VISION POEMS 2020 R.M. ENGELHARDT

“In reference to book banning, literature is how kids learn the perspectives of others. Essentially, it's how they are able to view the world. How do we expect them to build a better world if we take away their tools?”
― Mailka J. Stevely

“If we opt to mute the voices of the present and those who lived long ago, then the residue of the past is bound to be inherited by our future.”
― Mailka J. Stevely

“America cannot mend if its wounds are constantly covered.”
― Malika J. Stevely, Song of Redemption: A southern historical saga inspired by true events

“Hey Republicans, Don't Trample on Books and Libraries, Un-American Tyrants.”
― D.L. Lewis

“America cannot mend if its wounds are constantly covered and not treated.”
― Malika J. Stevely, Song of Redemption: A southern historical saga inspired by true events

“As libraries become battlegrounds, teens notice which books, and which identities, are under attack. Those who share identities with targeted authors or characters receive a powerful message of exclusion: Those books don't belong, and neither do you.”
― Ashley Hope Pérez

“We look for ourselves in the pages. So to take books off the shelves that contain, for example, LQBTQIA+ characters and lives is extremely damaging, especially for queer teens on the brink of becoming who they are meant to be. It’s essentially saying: ‘This way of living isn’t palatable to us. We don’t accept it. Don’t do it.’ And what could be more painful and distressing than that?”
― Amie Jones

“Books are a way we leave a mark on the world, aren't they? They say we were here, we loved and we grieved and we laughed and we made mistakes and we existed. They can be burned halfway across the world, but the words cannot be unread. They do live on in this library, but more importantly they are immortalized in anyone who has read them.”
― Brianna Labuskes, The Librarian of Burned Books

“Truth is the greatest of all national possessions. A state, a people, a system, which suppresses the truth or fears to publish it, deserves to collapse as rapidly and completely as possible.”
― Kurt Eisner

“Read A Book.

Because If you devalue literature you devalue humanity itself.

Education, thoughts & ideas are the only hopes for a real future that matters.”
― R.M. Engelhardt, OF SPIRIT, ASH & BONE POEMS PARABLES R.M. ENGELHARDT

“Book Bans Are Dumb
(Sonnet 1587)

Book bans are dumb,
It makes the mind numb.
If banning books were justice,
Middle ages would've been fun.

I’ve got Mein Kampf on my shelf,
next to bible, quran and vedanta.
You cannot fathom the wholeness of life,
if you let expansion be dictated by law.

Expansion can't be contained by law,
concocted in the gutter of tribalism.
Burning books doesn't prevent darkness,
It only obstructs illumination.

Book bans are dumb,
it makes the world numb.
Read reason, fiction, the lot -
Stretch your mind beyond medieval vision.”
― Abhijit Naskar, World War Human: 100 New Earthling Sonnets

“I reminded the board that the citizens of the parish consist of taxpayers who are white, Black, brown, gay, straight, Christian, non-Christian--people from all backgrounds and walks of life, and no one portion of the community should dictate what the rest of the citizens have access to.”
― Amanda Jones, That Librarian

“A grandmother said, "Despite whatever pretty words I think we've all heard about being concerned about what's in our collection, I want to make sure that we're being honest about what this discussion is. It's an attempt to remove content from the Public Library system and an effort to censor the voices of historically oppressed and marginalized communities. The board in this system has a responsibility to make decisions that align a library with mission and vision statements listed on the library website. I believe the content that Erin took offense to, and maybe some of the other parents and elected officials, are specifically LGBTQIA+. Those stories and voices are being targeted nationwide.”
― Amanda Jones, That Librarian: The Fight Against Book Banning in America

“The current wave of book banning sweeping the country has created a chilling effect on our education system and the purchasing of books in our libraries, the effects of which will be seen for decades even if we somehow get it under control in the next year. This is a huge movement that has been in the works for a while. It is well funded and well coordinated. It is about marginalizing and erasing cultures and groups of people, it is about defunding public institutions, it is about dumbing down society for a more easily led population, and it is about using libraries for political gain. At the end of the day, the pro-censorship movement is about privatizing education and privatizing libraries for a group of people who are seeking to line their pockets. And to achieve those goals, otherwise well-meaning people have been enlisted in a social movement that goes against everything America stands for. That's the really sad and tragic thing.”
― Amanda Jones, That Librarian: The Fight Against Book Banning in America

“These people decry government overreach as they try to use the government to dictate what citizens can and cannot read.”
― Amanda Jones, That Librarian: The Fight Against Book Banning in America

“This is consistent with many conspiracy theorists in my community, and across the country, who think there's always some hidden agenda in the school system. The only hidden agenda here isn't so hidden. These folks want to gut the public school system and privatize education so they can further exclude groups already marginalized.”
― Amanda Jones, That Librarian: The Fight Against Book Banning in America

“But staying silent is a kind of complicity, and when people don't push back, censorship efforts gain traction, and one day I'm afraid it will be too late. What the general public needs to know is that these people won't just stop at censoring books or ruining libraries. They will continue to wreak havoc on our public education system until it is irreversibly broken. White Christian nationalists want to decide for everyone what is allowed. They claim their parental rights are being taken away, but they're taking away the rights of other parents.”
― Amanda Jones, That Librarian: The Fight Against Book Banning in America

“What I see is a society growing more open-minded to people who are different from them, and a backlash from a segment of people who are uncomfortable with this. These folks see it as a zero-sum game. Any movement toward openness and acceptance somehow takes something away from them. This is where all the victim talk comes from, and the steady raising of volume and distortion in their claims as the truth fails them and they reach for fearmongering. America was founded not as a Christian nation, as they like to believe, but as a pluralistic democracy guaranteeing freedom of worship and the promise of equality. We still have a long way to go in the equality department, but the progress we have made should be celebrated, not feared. White Christian nationalists want nothing to do with this celebration. They want to turn back the clock to a time and place that never was.”
― Amanda Jones, That Librarian: The Fight Against Book Banning in America