From John Milton's "Areopagitica" (1644) [Appleton- Century Crofts; New York:1951] ... a work against censorship.

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p. 6 " ... as good almost kill a good man as kill a good book: who kills a man kills a reasonable creature, God's image; but he who destroys a good book, kills reason itself, kills the image of God, as it were, in the eye."

p. 14 " ... the example of Moses, Daniel, and Paul, who were skilful in the learning of the Egyptians, Chaldeans, and Greeks, which could not possibly be without reading their books of all sorts, in Paul especially, who thought it no defilement to insert into Holy Scripture the sentences of three Greek poets, and one of them a tragedian ..." (Acts 17:28 from Aratus; 1 Corinthians 15:33 from Euripides; Titus 1:12 from Epimenides)

p. 16 "'To the pure all things are pure;' not only meat and drinks, but all kind of knowledge whether good or evil; the knowledge cannot defile, nor consequently the books, if the will and conscience be not defiled."

p. 17 "Solomon informs us that much reading is a weariness to the flesh, but neither he nor other inspired author tells us that such or such reading is unlawful: yet certainly had God thought good to limit us herein, it had been much more expedient to have told us what was unlawful than what was wearisome."

p. 21 " ... a wise man will make better use of an idle pamphlet than a fool will do of sacred Scripture."

p. 25 "Banish all objects of lust, shut up all youth into the severest discipline that can be exercised in any hermitage, ye cannot make them chaste that came not thither so ..."

p. 37 "Any man may be a heretic in the truth; and if he believes things only because his pastor says so, or the Assembly so determines, without knowing other reason, though his belief be true, yet the very truth he holds becomes his heresy. There is not any burden that some would gladlier post off to another, than the charge and care of their religion."

p.51 "And though all the winds of doctrine were let loose to play upon the earth, so Truth be in the field, we do injuriously by licensing and prohibiting to misdoubt her strength. let her and falsehood grapple; who ever knew Truth to be the worse in a free and open encounter? Her confuting is the best and surest suppressing."