Our September 2022 Quiz, “How Do You Really Feel About Censorship?” features quotes about censorship and the importance of the free exchange of ideas in society.
These are quotes from politicians, philosophers, Supreme Court Justices, authors, poets, activists, and educators from around the world.
Can you match the person to the correct quote? If the person listed in the word bank is responsible for more than one quote, there will be an asterisk* after their name.
Answers to the September 2022 Quiz can be found in the last article of this issue (“Next Month in This Awful Awesome Life – October 2022) or by following this link,
Word-bank
Dwight D. Eisenhower* Heinrich Heine
Martin Luther King, Jr. Alfred Whitney Griswold
Oscar Wilde Mark Twain
Ray Bradbury* George Orwell
Voltaire Benjamin Franklin
Franklin Delano Roosevelt Joseph Brodsky
Judy Blume Sigmund Freud
Thomas Jefferson Justice William O. Douglas
John Osborne Lyndon Baines Johnson
Justice Potter Stewart George Bernard Shaw
Abbie Hoffman Dick Cavett
Ralph Waldo Emerson
1. "Where they have burned books, they will end in burning human beings." _____________________
2. “Information is the currency of democracy.” ______________________
3. “When decorum is repression, the only dignity free people have is to speak out.” _______________________
4. “Don't join the book burners... Don't be afraid to go in your library and read every book." ________________________
5. "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 sure weapon against bad ideas is better ideas. The source of better ideas is wisdom. The surest path to wisdom is a liberal education." ____________________________
6. It’s not just the books under fire now that worry me. It is the books that will never be written. The books that will never be read. And all due to the fear of censorship. As always, young readers will be the real losers.” ________________________
7. "If large numbers of people believe in freedom of speech, there will be freedom of speech, even if the law forbids it. But if public opinion is sluggish, inconvenient minorities will be persecuted, even if laws exist to protect them." _____________________
8. Think for yourselves and let others enjoy the privilege to do so, too." _____________________
9. “The books that the world calls immoral are books that show the world its own shame." ___________________________
10. “There is more than one way to burn a book. And the world is full of people running about with lit matches.” _______________________
11. "There are worse crimes than burning books. One of them is not reading them. " ________________________
12. “Censorship feeds the dirty mind more than the four-letter word itself would.” _______________________
13. “Books and ideas are the most effective weapons against intolerance and ignorance." ____________________________
14. “Censorship ends in logical completeness when nobody is allowed to read any books except the books that nobody reads." ___________________________
15. "Censorship is telling a man he can't have a steak just because a baby can't chew it." _________________________________
16. “As it is an ancient truth that freedom cannot be legislated into existence, so it is no less obvious that freedom cannot be censored not existence.” ______________________
17. “Whoever would overthrow the liberty of a nation must begin by subduing the freeness of speech.” ________________________
18. “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." ____________________________________
19. “Censorship reflects a society’s lack of confidence in itself. It is a hallmark of an authoritarian regime . . . .” _________________________________________
20. “You don’t have to burn books to destroy a culture. Just get people to stop reading them.” ____________________________
21. “Every burned book enlightens the world.” _____________________________
22. “What progress we are making. In the Middle Ages, they would have burned me. Now they are content with burning my books.” ___________________________
23. Censorship is the commonest social blasphemy because it is mostly concealed, built into us by indolence, self-interest, and cowardice.” __________________________
24. “There comes a time when one must take a position that is neither safe, nor politic, nor popular, but one must take it because it’s right.” ___________________________
25. The gains in education are never really lost; books may be burned, and cities sacked, but truth like the yearning for freedom, lives in the hearts of humble men.” _______________________________
ttps://nmsu.libguides.com/censorship/quotes
https://www.bustle.com/articles/183209-15-quotes-about-censorship-and-the-danger-of-banning-books