Freedom To Read Quotes - Page 2

• Only the suppressed word is dangerous.

  Ludwig Borne

  Inspirational, Censorship, First Amendment

  10 Copy quote

• First Amendment freedoms are most in danger when the government seeks to control thought or to justify its laws for that impermissible end. The right to think is the beginning of freedom, and speech must be protected from the government because speech is the beginning of thought.

  Anthony Kennedy

  Thinking, Government, Law

  Ashcroft v. Free Speech Coalition, 535 U.S. 234, 2002.

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• The Constitution exists precisely so that opinions and judgments, including esthetic and moral judgments about art and literature, can be formed, tested, and expressed. What the Constitution says is that these judgments are for the individual to make, not for the Government to decree, even with the mandate or approval of a majority. Technology expands the capacity to choose; and it denies the potential of this revolution if we assume the Government is best positioned to make these choices for us.

  Anthony Kennedy

  Art, Technology, Government

  25 Copy quote

• God forbid that any book should be banned. The practice is as indefensible as infanticide.

  Rebecca West

  Funny, Sarcastic, Women

  The Strange Necessity (1928) "The Tosh Horse"

  91 Copy quote

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• If there be time to expose through discussion the falsehood and fallacies, to avert the evil by the processes of education, the remedy to be applied is more speech, not enforced silence.

  Louis D. Brandeis

  Education, Time, Evil

  Whitney v. California (concurring opinion) (1927) See OliverWendell Holmes, Jr. 29

  92 Copy quote

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• 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.

  Stanley Forman Reed

  Freedom Of Speech, Utterance, May

  4 Copy quote

• 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.

  William O. Douglas

  Teaching, Rights In America, Political Revolution

  "The One Un-American Act". William O. Douglas' speech to the Author's Guild Council in New York on receiving the 1951 Lauterbach Award, December 3, 1952.

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• Freedom to differ is not limited to things that do not matter much. That would be a mere shadow of freedom. The test of its substance is the right to differ as to things that touch the heart of the existing order.

  Robert H. Jackson

  Freedom, Heart, Order

  West Virginia State Bd. of Educ. v. Barnette (1943)

  37 Copy quote

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• [Confiscating a book and punishing its author] is a sign that one does not have a good case, or at least doesn't trust it enough to defend it with reasons and refute the objections. Some people even go so far as to consider prohibited or confiscated books to be the best ones of all, for the prohibition indicates that their authors wrote what they really thought rather than what they were supposed to think . . .

  Laszlo Radvanyi

  Book, Thinking, People

  6 Copy quote

• 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.

  William J. Brennan

  Government, Expression, Ideas

  "Texas v. Johnson, 491 U.S. 397". 1989.

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• One thing about having mostly absent parents that I think was perhaps "good" for the development of my intellect/writing is that I was given almost total freedom to read/write/look at whatever I wanted. I wonder a lot about how my past experiences, particularly my negative childhood (home life and being severely bullied/ostracized throughout school) as formed my/my thoughts/my writing, though I should also note those things were far from the only thing that had an impact on me/my writing.

  Marie Calloway

  Home, Writing, School

  Source: therumpus.net

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• For if we are observed in all matters, we are constantly under threat of correction, judgment, criticism, even plagiarism of our own uniqueness. We become children, fettered under watchful eyes, constantly fearful that-either now or in the uncertain future-patterns we leave behind will be brought back to implicate us, by whatever authority has now become focused upon our once-private and innocent acts. We lose our individuality, because everything we do is observable and recordable.

  Bruce Schneier

  Children, Eye, Individuality

  41 Copy quote