John F. Kennedy Quotes

T]he Constitution does not guarantee the right to acquire information at a public library without any risk of embarrassment.

Libraries should be open to all - except the censor.

Don't join the book burners. Don't think you are going to conceal faults by concealing evidence that they ever existed. Don't be afraid to go into your library and read every book so long as any document does not offend your own ideas of decency. That should be the only censorship.

What is also strange to me is that public libraries have always been in the forefront of opposing censorship.

The real heroes are the librarians and teachers who at no small risk to themselves refuse to lie down and play dead for censors.

I'm as against restricting access to drugs as I am to burning books. It offends me in the same way.

Don't join the book burners... Don't be afraid to go in your library and read every book.

The free access to information is not a privilege, but a necessity for any free society. One of my favorite things to do as a young man was wander through the stacks of my hometown library. I'd just browse until I found something interesting. Libraries have definitely changed my life.

Censorship has had a long history in the western world. Book banning is as old as books.

The greatest interest at stake is not that of the copyright holders or the database companies, rather it is the interest a free and open society has in ensuring that everyone can learn the facts, regardless of their economic background. We should regard our nation’s involvement in the knowledge of its citizens … as the highest and most precious intellectual property we can ever protect.

It’s one of the basics of librarianship, to respect privacy, to understand that what people read isn’t necessarily what they believe, and to give them the ability to come in and find information without any chilling effect.

You should have access to ideas and information regardless of your age. If anyone is going to limit or guide a young person, it should be the parent or guardian — and only the parent or guardian.

Not every obnoxious talk leads to progress, but we cannot tell which unusual idea, which seditious thought will be tomorrow's accepted truth and enshrined right ... after all, all that we take for granted, was once deemed extremely objectionable... So, not knowing where the next big step in the progress of human civilization will come from, we open our ears, our minds and our hearts to the new, the unusual and the contrarian.

To limit the press is to insult a nation; to prohibit reading of certain books is to declare the inhabitants to be either fools or slaves: such a prohibition ought to fill them with disdain.

If the First Amendment means anything, it means that a State has no business telling a man, sitting alone in his own house, what books he may read or what films he may watch. Our whole constitutional heritage rebels at the thought of giving government the power to control men's minds.

Libraries are public institutions that serve as catalysts for public discussions that help solve community challenges. Such efforts are not possible when patrons are not allowed to engage in open debate in a public forum, but rather are arrested for asking difficult questions.

Freedom of ideas and communications is one of the things we are fighting for, and our enemies are fighting against.

In 2009, the American Library Association recorded 460 challenges reported to the Office of Intellectual Freedom.

Librarians see themselves as the guardians of the First Amendment. You got a thousand Mother Joneses at the barricades! I love the librarians, and I am grateful for them!

A public library is the most democratic thing in the world. What can be found there has undone dictators and tyrants.

He who destroys a good book kills reason itself.

In my world there would be as many public libraries as there are Starbucks.

What I tell kids is don't get mad (about censorship) get even. Run, don't walk, to the first library you can find, and read what they're trying to keep out of your eyes. Read what they're trying to keep out of your brains. Because that's exactly what you need to know.

Let us welcome controversial books and controversial authors.

But once a culture develops sufficiently to become skeptical, the idea of censorship becomes less attractive. To suppress a book or a picture or a sculpture or a play or a film is a terrible act of aggression against the artist who created it. This is a miming of capital punishment; it destroys the life that has been emanated by a life.