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Book Burning Quotes

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Book Burning Quotes

“In traditional histories, the rise of humanism is usually portrayed as “a good thing,” but the truth is that the humanists almost managed to destroy 300 years of progress in natural philosophy. By discarding the advances made by medieval scholars together with so many of the manuscripts that contained them, they could have set back the advance of science by centuries. Einstein might have had to do the work of Newton. The reason that progress in science was not so held back (although it arguably didn’t move forward as quickly as it might have done) was that the invention of printing had guaranteed that, if nothing else, the old books were preserved. Most people forgot about them, but a few, like Galileo, used the knowledge found within.”

HumanismBook BurningRennaissance
Book:God's Philosophers: How the Medieval World Laid the Foundations of Modern Science
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“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.”

ReadingLiteratureLearningBooksBook LoversPursuit Of KnowledgeBook BanningBook BurningBibliophileBook Ban
Book:World War Human: 100 New Earthling Sonnets
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“Colored people don’t like Little Black Sambo. Burn it. White people don’t feel good about Uncle Tom’s Cabin. Burn it. Someone’s written a book on tobacco and cancer of the lungs? The cigarette people are weeping? Burn the book. Serenity, Montag. Peace, Montag. Take your fight outside. Better yet, into the incinerator.”

ReadingBooksDiscomfortTobaccoPreferencesBook BanningBook BurningUncle Tom S CabinLittle Black Sambo
Book:Fahrenheit 451
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“The point is obvious. There is more than one way to burn a book. And the world is full of people running about with lit matches. Every minority, be it Baptist, Unitarian, Irish, Italian, Octogenarian, Zen Buddhist, Zionist, Seventh-day Adventist, Women's Lib, Republican, Mattachine, Four Square Gospel feels it has the will, the right, the duty to douse the kerosene, light the fuse. Every dimwit editor who sees himself as the source of all dreary blanc-mange plain porridge unleavened literature, licks his guillotine and eyes the neck of any author who dares to speak above a whisper or write above a nursery rhyme.”

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Book:Fahrenheit 451
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“When we stop reading, we pave the way toward book burning; when we stop caring, we make way for someone else to take over control; when we prefer personality to character, and reality show or virtual reality to reality itself, then we get the kind of politicians that we deserve.”

ReadingSocial ResponsibilityPoliticiansTotalitarianismVirtual RealityReality TvAntipathyBook Burning
Book:Read Dangerously: The Subversive Power of Literature in Troubled Times
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“With school turning out more runners, jumpers, racers, tinkerers, grabbers, snatchers, fliers, and swimmers instead of examiners, critics, knowers, and imaginative creators, the word 'intellectual,' of course, became the swear word it deserved to be. You always dread the unfamiliar. Surely you remember the boy in your own school class who was exceptionally ‘bright,’ did most of the reciting and answering while the others sat like so many leaden idols, hating him. And wasn’t it this bright boy you selected for beatings and tortures after hours? Of course it was. We must all be alike. Not everyone born free and equal, as the Constitution says, but everyone made equal. Each man the image of every other; then all are happy, for there are no mountains to make them cower, to judge themselves against. So! A book is a loaded gun in the house next door. Burn it. Take the shot from the weapon. Breach man's mind. Who knows who might be the target of the well-read man? Me? I won't stomach them for a minute.”

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Book:Fahrenheit 451
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“The important thing for you to remember, Montag, is we're the Happiness Boys, the Dixie Duo, you and I and the others. We stand against the small tide of those who want to make everyone unhappy with conflicting theory and thought. We have our fingers in the dike. Hold steady. Don't let the torrent of melancholy and drear philosophy drown our world. We depend on you. I don't think you realize how important you are, we are, to our happy world as it stands now.”

HappinessThoughtUnhappinessMelancholyCensorshipTheoriesBook BurningThought Police
Book:Fahrenheit 451
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“When the Regime commanded the unlawful books to be burned, teams of dull oxen hauled huge cartloads to the bonfires. Then a banished writer, one of the best, scanning the list of excommunicated texts, became enraged: he'd been excluded! He rushed to his desk, full of contemptuous wrath, to write fierce letters to the morons in power — Burn me! he wrote with his blazing pen — Haven't I always reported the truth? Now here you are, treating me like a liar! Burn me!”

CensorshipBook BurningBrecht
Author:Bertolt Brecht
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“Some read to remember the home they had left behind, others to forget the hell that surrounded them. Books uplifted their weary souls and energized their minds…books had the power to sooth an aching heart, renew hope for the future, and provide a respite when there was no other escape.”

World War IiThe Great GatsbyBanned BooksOkinawaBook BurningNormandyGisFranklin Delano RooseveltIwo JimaPearl HarborGuadalcanalSaipanGi BillArmed Services EditionsBetty SmithOperation TorchVictory Books Campaign
Author:Molly Guptill Manning
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“No, I am not imagining a book-burning, warmongering, anti-intellectual fascist regime – in my plan, there is no place for re ghters who light up the Homers and Lady Murasakis and Cao Xueqins stashed under your bed – because, for starters, I’m not banning literature per se. I’m banning the reading of literature. Purchasing and collecting books and other forms of literature remains perfectly legitimate as long as you don’t peruse the literature at hand.”

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Author:Kyoko Yoshida
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“And so, with a slow sweep of the arm that remained forever etched in my memory, he took out a match, lit it, and tossed it onto the pile of books. With a quiet huff...ff...ff the flames rippled over the pages, catching first the old books with the brown paper whose smell I loved so much. I vividly remember how Danko's Burning Heart was engulfed in flames that then licked at Luce's skirt who, desperately trying to protect herself from the fire in pages of Romain Rolland's book, held Pierre tightly to her breast. I watched as the fire spread to the intertwined lovers Pierre and Natasha, Heathcliff and Cathrine Earnshaw, Scarlett O'Hara and Rhett Butler, Elizabeth and Mr. Darcy, abelard and Heloise, Tristan and Isolde, Salaman and Absal, Vis and Ramin, Vamegh and Azra, Zohreh and Manuchehr, shirin and Farhad, Leyli and Majnun, Arthur and Gemma, the Rose and the Little Prince, before they had the chance to smell or kiss each other again, or whisper. "I love you" one last time.”

ReadingBooksBook BurningIranian RevolutionLiterature About LiteratureIranian PoetryIranian Women
Book:The Enlightenment of the Greengage Tree
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“When the Associated Press picked up the story from local accounts, readers of The Washington Post, the Chicago Tribune, and dozens of other papers around the country learned how, just three years after the Second World War, American citizens were burning books.”

Graphic NovelsBook BurningComic BooksMoral Panic
Book:The Ten-Cent Plague: The Great Comic-Book Scare and How it Changed America
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“Book burning is a charming old custom, hallowed by antiquity. It has been practiced for centuries by fascists, communists, atheists, school children, rival authors, and tired librarians. Like everything of importance since the invention of the cloak and the shroud, its origins are cloaked in mystery and shrouded in secrecy. Some scholars believe that the first instance of book burning occurred in the Middle Ages, when a monk was trying to illuminate a manuscript. All agree that book burning was almost non-existent during the period when books were made of stone.”

TryingFirstsBelieveChildrenHas BeensMadeBookAgeSchoolMysteryMiddleCenturyPeriodsStonesImportanceAgreeTiredAtheistInventionInstanceBurningCustomsCommunistScholarCharmingMonkRivalsSecrecyMiddle AgesLibrarianFascistsAntiquityManuscriptsCloaksShroudsBook Burning
Author:Richard Armour
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“Shut the door, they're coming through the window, shut the window, they're coming through the door," are the words to an old song. They fit my lifestyle with newly arriving butcher/censors every month. Only six weeks ago, I discovered that, over the years, some cubby-hole editors at Ballantine Books, fearful of contaminating the young, had, bit by bit, censored some 75 separate sections from the novel. Students, reading the novel which, after all, deals with censorship and book-burning in the future, write to tell me of this exquisite irony.”

WritingYearsBookYoungSongReadingBitsDealsNovelDoorsWeekStudentsMonthsFitSixWindowLifestyleHolesBurningIronyEditorsCensorshipFearfulSectionsExquisiteArrivingButchersCensoredOld SongBook Burning
Book:Fahrenheit 451: A Novel
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“The burning of a book is a sad, sad sight, for even though a book is nothing but ink and paper, it feels as if the ideas contained in the book are disappearing as the pages turn to ashes and the cover and binding--which is the term for the stitching and glue that holds the pages together--blacken and curl as the flames do their wicked work. When someone is burning a book, they are showing utter contempt for all of the thinking that produced its ideas, all of the labor that went into its words and sentences, and all of the trouble that befell the author . . .”

IfsThinkingFeelsBookIdeasTogetherTurnsTermTroubleSadnessPaperPagesLaborSightSentencesDisappearBurningFlamesWickedContemptAshesInkBindingGlueCurlsCensorship In BooksBook BurningInk And Paper
Author:Daniel Handler
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“I am Envy, begotten of a chimney-sweeper and an oyster-wife. I cannot read, and therefore wish all books were burnt; I am lean with seeing others eat - O that there would come a famine through all the world, that all might die, and I live alone; then thou should'st see how fat I would be! But must thou sit and I stand? Come down, with a vengeance!”

WorldShouldBookMightWould BeDiesWishWifeSeeingEnvyFatsVengeanceFamineOystersChimneysDeadly SinsBook BurningSeven Deadly SinsSweepersFaustusSeven Sins
Book:Doctor Faustus: With The English Faust Book
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“There are worse crimes than burning books. One of them is not reading them.”

BookReadingEducationCrimeIgnoranceBurningThought ProvokingCensorshipReading BooksWriting A BookBook ReadingSelf EducationBannedGreat BookBook WritingBooks And ReadingReading And WritingIlliteracyLove Of ReadingBook LoverCensoredCensoringOld BooksLearning To ReadChildren BookWriting And ReadingEducation And LiteracyBanned BooksReading WritingCensorship In BooksReading And LiteracyBooks For KidsLibraries And ReadingSchool LibraryReading For KidsBook BanningGreat ReadingBook BurningImportance Of ReadingCensoring BooksInspirational ReadingThis Is A BookBook LearningInspiring BookReading InspirationalInspiring ReadingMartian ChroniclesReading LiteratureReading And LearningIlliterate Person
Author:Joseph Brodsky
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“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.”

LongBookIdeasRunningScienceLostFearEducationHistoryPathAtheismSourceWeaponsLibertarianRageBurningJailCensorshipLong RunsBad IdeasBannedLimiting GovernmentCensoredCensoringBanned BooksCensorship In BooksLiberal EducationBook BanningBook BurningCensoring BooksBurn Book
Author:Alfred Whitney Griswold
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