Share on Facebook Share on Twitter Comment on this quoteShare via Email Print this Page Daily Quotes Archives2005-08-10 Aug 10, 2005You see these dictators on their pedestals, surrounded by the bayonets of their soldiers and the truncheons of their police. Yet in their hearts there is unspoken – unspeakable! – fear. They are afraid of words and thoughts! Words spoken abroad, thoughts stirring at home, all the more powerful because they are forbidden. These terrify them. A little mouse – a little tiny mouse! – of thought appears in the room, and even the mightiest potentates are thrown into panic.~ Sir Winston ChurchillBut this is slavery, not to speak one’s thought.~ EuripidesNobody these days holds the written word in such high esteem as police states do...~ Italo Calvino Aug 9, 2005Access to knowledge is the superb, the supreme act of truly great civilizations. Of all the institutions that purport to do this, free libraries stand virtually alone in accomplishing this.~ Toni MorrisonLock up your libraries if you like, but there is no gate, no lock, no bolt that you can set upon the freedom of my mind.~ Virginia WoolfWhere men cannot freely convey their thoughts to one another, no other liberty is secure.~ William Earnest Hocking Aug 8, 2005Those who are convinced they have a monopoly on The Truth always feel that they are only saving the world when they slaughter the heretics.~ Arthur M. Schlesinger, Jr.Philosophy means the complete liberty of the mind, and therefore independence of all social, political or religious prejudice... It loves one thing only... truth.~ Henri Frederic AmielThoughts are free and are subject to no rule. On them rests the freedom of man, and they tower above the light of nature.~ Philippus Aureolus Paracelsus Aug 5, 2005It is not the answer that enlightens, but the question.~ Eugene IonescoThere is a lurking fear that some things are not meant “to be known,” that some inquiries are too dangerous for human beings to make.~ Carl SaganThe first people totalitarians destroy or silence are men of ideas and free minds.~ Isaiah Berlin Aug 4, 2005The only real security for social well-being is the free exercise of men’s minds.~ Harold J. LaskiIf 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.~ Justice Thurgood MarshallWhen men yield up the privilege of thinking, the last shadow of liberty quits the horizon.~ Thomas Paine Previous week's quotes Next week's quotes Share on Facebook Tweet Email Print