Burning Books Quotes

Greed is empowered by knowledge, but we shouldn't be burning books or reject such knowledge, as what happened during the Inquisition and World War 2. We should instead share it and learn it. ~ Daniel Marques

Who come up with that crap about burning books? The people who venerate books are the ones who in reality actually burn people. There's nothing the world could use more right now than a good ol' fashioned bible burning. Qu'rans too. ~ Justin Kelly

Those who begin by burning books will end by burning people. ~ Heinrich Heine

The censor pretends he is protecting tender hearts, shielding children from sex and violence, keeping the righteous in the right path, guarding against temptation, preserving virtue. How? by burning books, tearing out tongues, stretching necks, stoning women; through torture and imprisonment; by threats of violence against the victim's friends and family; by force-feeding his own people a philosophy not only false and wicked now but false and wicked the day it was first announced by some imaginary lord and used to purchase or preserve his privileges and hoodwink the world. ~ William H Gass

Nothing opens up the mind and the heart like books do, and so they have the power to change the whole world. That's why the are burning books, Ava. To stop us thinking, and feeling, and imagining ... ~ Kate Forsyth

I've heard bombs going off in our embassies, mobs screaming for blood, mullahs issuing death decrees, so-called leaders yelling for jihad. They've been burning books, Dave - the temperature of hate in parts of the Islamic world has gone out to Pluto. And I've been listening to them." "And you don't think we have - the people in Washington?" He said it without anger. I was at one time a leading intelligence agent and I think he genuinely wanted to know. "Maybe in your heads. Not in your gut." He turned and looked out the window. It was starting to rain. He was quiet for a long time and I began to wonder if his blood pressure had taken off again. "I think you're right," he said at last. "I think, like the Jews, we believed in the fundamental goodness of men; we never thought it could really happen. ~ Terry Hayes

I will gather up a lifetime of things unsaid, write them down, and then offer them all to be lit up for security and burned. All at once.
And then I can watch the whole thing turn to ash. The whole damn thing.
Light the match, and watch it burn.
What a loaded bonfire that would be though, if this gets burned when I finish filling up the whole book.
What a cleansing experience that will be!
If flames could speak, what a story they would tell.
They say that the original bonfires were the burning up of bones. Bad bones. Bad people. Enemies. Turning bones to ash. And it was the burning up of curses and all things bad as well. God knows we have had and still have enemies, and even curses. Real ones. ~ Suzy Valtsioti

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. ~ Alfred Whitney Griswold

Coloured 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. ~ Ray Bradbury

Book burnings. Always the forerunners. Heralds of the stake, the ovens, the mass graves. ~ Geraldine Brooks

My men are my references. They're waiting outside for the books. They're dangerous."
"Men like that always are. ~ Ray Bradbury

And that's the most horrible thing about censorship: To avoid falling afoul of the censors, we question ourselves and censor ourselves and make a big deal out of things in our heads. We do the work of the control freaks for them, out of a desire to avoid them. ~ G.R. Reader

I remember hearing a saying long ago: 'Men who start by burning books end by burning other men,' " I said. ~ Yoko Ogawa

And on the subject of burning books: I want to congratulate librarians, not famous for their physical strength or their powerful political connections or their great wealth, who, all over this country, have staunchly resisted anti-democratic bullies who have tried to remove certain books from their shelves, and have refused to reveal to thought police the names of persons who have checked out those titles.
So the America I loved still exists, if not in the White House or the Supreme Court or the Senate or the House of Representatives or the media. The America I love still exists at the front desks of our public libraries. ~ Kurt Vonnegut

If you had a front row seat at the Renaissance, you would have seen Machiavelli come by plotting, and you would have seen murders in the streets, you would have seen violence, you have seen people burning books and it would have looked like the world was a horrible place, but that's where all these incredible stuff we're still living with comes out of. ~ Juan Enriquez

It hardly matters why a library is destroyed: every banning, curtailment, shredding, plunder or loot gives rise (at least as a ghostly presence) to a louder, clearer, more durable library of the banned, looted, plundered, shredded or curtailed. ~ Alberto Manguel

...people burn books, and that they ban books is, in a way, a good sign. It's a good sign because it means books have power. When people burn books, it's because they're afraid of what's inside them... ~ Marcus Sedgwick

Pouring out liquor is like burning books. ~ William Faulkner

A man should begin with his own times. He should become acquainted first of all with the world in which he is living and participating. He should not be afraid of reading too much or too little. He should take his reading as he does his food or his exercise. The good reader will gravitate to the good books. He will discover from his contemporaries what is inspiring or fecundating, or merely enjoyable, in past literature. He should have the pleasure of making these discoveries on his own, in his own way. What has worth, charm, beauty, wisdom, cannot be lost or forgotten. But things can lose all value, all charm and appeal, if one is dragged to them by the scalp. ~ Henry Miller

That's what our country needs – more books and far more readers. ~ Aman Jassal

Today, our incentives aren't set up well - you can make a lot of money burning fossil fuels, digging up wetlands, pumping fossil water out of aquifers that will take 10,000 years to recharge, overfishing species in international waters that are close to collapse, and so on. ~ Ramez Naam

There is a time when the soul lives in God, and a time when God lives in the soul. What is appropriate to one state is inconsistent with the other.

When God lives in the soul it ought to abandon itself entirely to his providence. When the soul lives in God it is obliged to procure for itself carefully and very regularly, every means it can devise by which to arrive at the divine union. The whole procedure is marked out; the readings, the examinations, the resolutions. The guide is always at hand and everything is by rule, even the hours for conversation.

When God lives in the soul it has nothing left of self, but only that which the spirit which actuates it imparts to it at each moment. Nothing is provided for the future, no road is marked out . . . No more books with marked passages for such a soul; often enough it is even deprived of a regular directior, for God allows it no other support than that which he gives it himself. Its dwelling is in darkness, forgetfulness, abandonment, death and nothingness. . .

Everything that others discover with great difficulty this soul finds in abandonment, and what they guard with care in order to be able to find it again, this soul receives at the moment there is occasion for it, and afterwards relinquishes so as to admit nothing but exactly what God desires it to have in order to live by him alone.

The former soul undertakes an infinity of good works for the glory of God, the latter is often c ~ Jean-Pierre De Caussade

What art and books do at their best is investigate why we are the way we are. ~ Philipp Meyer

I figure whatever I choose to create, I'll be neglecting somebody - so my art may as well make me happy. - Audrey Niffenegger ~ Jen Campbell

It's natural to fear death, as a conscious, thinking being - it's the literal end of you. I'm not even afraid of death itself. It's more of a profound... not wanting to leave the party ~ EXO Books

Reading is important, because if you can read, you can learn anything about everything and everything about anything. ~ Tomie DePaola

I, on the other hand, believe that books, maps, scissors, and Scotch tape dispensers are all unreliable vagrants, likely to take off for parts unknown unless strictly confined to quarters. ~ Anne Fadiman

There are countless books written on self-defense. Not all are non- sensical, but many are. Nathaniel Cooke has clearly thought a great deal about the subject and distilled its essence in a way that is wholly admirable. ~ Robert Twigger

He (Mario Vargas Llosa) looks grave, transported. And there, I think, is the personality that wrote the books: one in which a subversive comic sense and appetite for the ridiculous jostle with an intense, statesmanlike seriousness about the business of being alive. ~ Tim Martin

I'm not one of those professors whose office is encased floor-to-ceiling with books. By the way, I think academics do this to intimidate their visitors. ~ Gary Hamel

All children in adventure books have to be orphans. ~ Charlie Higson

If we cannot find our way to a time when most of us are willing to admit that, at the very least, we are not sure whether or not God wrote some of our books, then we need only count the days to Armageddon - because God has given us far many more reasons to kill one another than to turn the other cheek. ~ Sam Harris

How did we get here? How, like Tootle the Train, did we get so off track? Perhaps it's time to revisit these beloved stories and start all over again. Trying to figure out where you belong, like Scuffy the Tugboat? Maybe, as time marches on, you're beginning to feel that you resemble the Saggy Baggy Elephant.
Or perhaps your problems are more sweeping. Like the Poky Little Puppy, do you seem to be getting into trouble rather often and missing out on the strawberry shortcake of life? Maybe this book can help you! After all, Little Golden Books were first published during the dark days of World War II, and they've been comforting people during trying times ever since - while gently teaching us a thing or two. And they remind us that we've had the potential to be wise and content all along. ~ Diane Muldrow

Many books mean many windows; many windows mean many new lights! Don't get stuck in one window, one book, one man, one country and one belief! Increase your windows! Wisdom is the house made of only windows! ~ Mehmet Murat Ildan

Whether I'm being influenced by new music that I'm listening to, books I've read, my friends, or my faith, I'm learning all the time. ~ Hayley Williams

One of the best book marketing tips I can give you is simply building relationships - well that and publishing more books. ~ Heather Hart

Books are a poor substitute for female companionship, but they are easier to find. ~ Patrick Rothfuss

The brain is an organ of aggression, and there are many roads to this Rome of imagined conquests - so many that mental disorders, regardless of their particulars, often result in a derangement of our aggressive drive. Schizophrenics stand on the streetcorner screaming obscenely at passersby; depressives lie in their beds screaming mutely at themselves. Our gentle aggressions, the drive to be, prods us out of bed in the morning and draws us toward each other. And in each other we find what our aggressive brain desires: love. As we are wired for aggression, so we are wired to love. We are a lavishly loving species, aggressively sentimental. We are tirelessly in pursuit of fresh targets for our love. We love our children so long that they come to despise us for it. We love friends, books... We love answers. We love yesterday and next year. We love gods, for a god is there when all else fails, and God can keep all conduits of love alive - erotic, maternal, paternal, euphoric, infantile. ~ Natalie Angier

Judge not the value of a friend by the number of boy- or girlfriends they helped you get. But by the number of books they've recommended to you. ~ Mokokoma Mokhonoana

He ran his finger down the hardcover keyboard of book spines. Individual memories of each, particularly his first experience with every title, burned through him ~ Mike Robinson

I don't really collect the mementos. I do steal books off of sets. If there's a library on the set, you can bet that I'll steal away with a book or two. ~ Billy Campbell

I was writing at a really young age, but it took me a long time to be brave enough to become a published writer, or to try to become a published writer. It's a very public way to fail. And I was kind of scared, so I started out as a ghost writer, and I wrote for other series, like Disney 'Aladdin' and 'Sweet Valley' and books like that. ~ K.A. Applegate

I prefer to be left alone with my books. ~ Alison Weir

Anyone can see that an ass laden with books remains a donkey. A human being laden with the undigested results of a tussle with thoughts and books, however, still passes for wise. ~ Idries Shah

Ah! there is a man who justifies the wit who insisted that one ought never to know an author except through his books. ~ Marcel Proust

I wouldn't get nearly as many books written if I lived in New York. The Columbia Gorge is fantastic. When the sun shines, I just want to be outdoors. ~ Chuck Palahniuk

No matter what our age, we ought to never stop eating books, for books are the feast of the imagination. ~ Robin R. Meyers

Ultimately, I want a peak experience in reading, and that is sometimes difficult to find in contemporary fiction. I'm not interested in books that are just clever and well executed; polish doesn't impress me, and I don't care about a merely capable sentence. Life is short; I want a confrontation with high art. I want soul. Great literature rattles the mind and makes the body sing. It's an unmistakable, electric feeling, and too rare. That is what I want. ~ C.E. Morgan

I was so inspired by Dr. King that in 1956, with some of my brothers and sisters and first cousins - I was only 16 years old - we went down to the public library trying to check out some books, and we were told by the librarian that the library was for whites only and not for colors. It was a public library. ~ John Lewis