“Let children read whatever they want and then talk about it with them. If parents and kids can talk together, we won’t have as much censorship because we won’t have as much fear.”
—Judy Blume
Category Archives: quotes
Quotes: Benjamin Franklin
“If all printers were determined not to print anything till they were sure it would offend nobody, there would be very little printed.”
— Benjamin Franklin
quotes: Kurt Vonnegut
“All these people talk so eloquently about getting back to good old-fashioned values. Well, as an old poop I can remember back to when we had those old-fashioned values, and I say let’s get back to the good old-fashioned First Amendment of the good old-fashioned Constitution of the United States — and to hell with the censors! Give me knowledge or give me death!”
— Kurt Vonnegut
Quotes: Alfred Whitney Griswold
Books won’t stay banned. They won’t burn. Ideas won’t go to jail. In the long run of history, the censor and the inquisitor have always lost. The only weapon against bad ideas is better ideas. ~Alfred Whitney Griswold, New York Times, 24 February 1959
Quote: Mildred D. Taylor
“Although there are those who wish to ban my books because I have used language that is painful, I have chosen to use the language that was spoken during the period, for I refuse to whitewash history. The language was painful and life was painful for many African Americans, including my family. I remember the pain.” ~Mildred D. Taylor, The Land
Quotes: U.S. Supreme Court Justices
– “Every legislative limitation upon utterance, however valid, may in a particular case serve as an inroad upon the freedom of speech which the Constitution protects.” ~U.S. Supreme Court Justice Stanley F. Reed
– “If there is a bedrock principle underlying the First Amendment it is that the Government may not prohibit the expression of an idea simply because society finds the idea itself offensive or disagreeable.” ~U.S. Supreme Court Justice William Brennan, in Texas v. Johnson,
–“Restriction of free thought and free speech is the most dangerous of all subversions. It is the one un-American act that could most easily defeat us.” ~U.S. Supreme Court Justice William O. Douglas
-“One man’s vulgarity is another’s lyric.” ~U.S. Supreme Court justice John Marshall Harlan, 1971
-“Men feared witches and burnt women. It is the function of speech to free men from the bondage of irrational fears.” ~U.S. Supreme Court Justice Louis D. Brandeis (1856–1941), Whitney v. California, 274 U. S. 357 (1927)
CPL Banned Books Week 