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Quotes of the Day for 16 March 2005 - Imprimatur

On this day in 1517 the Fifth Lateran Council completed their deliberations. Under the leadership of Pope Leo X, one of the key elements was a reaction to the newly-developed process of printing books. Because books had been printed that the Roman church judged to include "pernicious views contrary to the Christian religion and to the reputation of prominent persons of rank", the Pope assumed authority over all printing, apparently throughout the world. That's even worse than Alaska's Senator Ted Stevens and his current campaign to extend the FCC's decency rules to cover cable and satellite television!

Once you permit those who are convinced of their own superior rightness to censor and silence and suppress those who hold contrary opinions, just at that moment the citadel has been surrendered. For the American citadel is a man. Not man in general. Not man in the abstract. Not the majority of men. But man. That man. His worth. His uniqueness.
     - Archibald MacLeish, 1892 - 1982

No nation ancient or modern ever lost the liberty of freely speaking, writing, or publishing their sentiments, but forthwith lost their liberty in general and became slaves.
     - John Peter Zenger, 1697 - 1746

We are not mere gatekeepers and doorkeepers of humanity's heritage. We also must protect its dissemination. We must beware of all censorship in whatever form it comes, because to censor, to tamper with truth, to tamper with our memory, is to commit a historical sin. We, as librarians, have a major duty that we must all share all over the world, in order not to allow anybody to control, to twist, and most important of all, to manipulate our human will and through it our free institutions.
     - Vartan Gregorian

The vast number of titles which are published each year? All of them are to the good, even if some of them may annoy or even repel us for a time. For none of us would trade freedom of expression and of ideas for the narrowness of the public censor. America is a free market for people who have something to say, and need not fear to say it.
     - Hubert Horatio Humphrey, 1911 - 1978

I'll publish right or wrong. Fools are my theme, let satire be my song.
     - George Gordon Noel Byron, 1788 - 1824

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