Skip to content

In the long run of history, the censor and the inquisitor have always lost. The only sure weapon against bad ideas is better ideas.

— Alfred Whitney Griswold

Another quote →

Topics

History

More quotes by Alfred Whitney Griswold

Could Hamlet have been written by a committee, or the Mona Lisa painted by a club? Could the New Testament have been composed as a conference report?

Liberal learning is both a safeguard against false ideas of freedom and a source of true ones.

Self-respect cannot be hunted. It cannot be purchased.

There are certain things in a man that have to be won, not forced; inspired, not compelled. Among these are many, I should say most, of the things that constitute the good life. All are essential to democracy. All are proof against its enemies.

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.

All Alfred Whitney Griswold quotes →

You may also like

A generation which ignores history has no past —and no future.

Robert A. Heinlein Time Enough for Love (1973)

History, Stephen said, is a nightmare from which I am trying to awake.

James Joyce Ulysses (1922)

If we don’t care about our past we can’t have very much hope for our future.

Jacqueline Kennedy Onassis

I like the dreams of the future better than the history of the past, — so good night!

Thomas Jefferson

Attribution

Quote text and notes from Wikiquote: Alfred Whitney Griswold (page history), available under CC BY-SA 4.0. Source quality and labels are our own summary of what Wikiquote records.