Right to Read Quotes

Censorship ends in logical completeness when nobody is allowed to read any books except the books that nobody reads.

Books won't stay banned. They won't burn. Ideas won't go to jail.

I live in America. I have the right to write whatever I want. And it's equaled by another right just as powerful: the right not to read it. Freedom of speech includes the freedom to offend people.

It's so wrong when I pick up a new edition of Huckleberry Finn and I look at the last page and it doesn't say, Yours truly, at the end.

I don't think anyone should be banned. If you don't like a book, set it aside.

The books that will never be read. And all due to the fear of censorship. As always, young readers will be the real losers.

... not likely to be read if left alone, but, if persecuted, it will be generally read. Every man in the United States will think it a duty to buy a copy, in vindication of his right to buy, and read what he pleases.

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.

Americans may not always live up to the Bill of Rights, but Americans do not ban books.

While the debate over banned books usually seems to happen just outside the gates of government, it takes on a new danger and urgency when legislators get involved. Their actions cause voices to be silenced both inside and outside the books. That's un-American.

Every book that is banned is a badge of honor.

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.