QUOTES FROM FAHRENHEIT 451 ABOUT CENSORSHIP WITH PAGE NUMBERS

“That’s the good part of dying; when you’ve nothing to lose, you run any risk you want.”

“Stuff your eyes with wonder . . . live as if you’d drop dead in ten seconds. See the world. It’s more fantastic than any dream made or paid for in factories.”

“You can’t make people listen. They have to come round in their own time, wondering what happened and why the world blew up under them.”

“They’re faking. You threw them off at the last jump. I didn’t, though. I’m still crazy. The rain’s pouring. […] How long will we be here, do you suppose? Who knows? Another hour, perhaps. Or a month.”

“But remember that the Captain belongs to the most dangerous enemy of truth and freedom, the solid unthinking majority. […] Oh, God, the terrible tyranny of the majority. We all have our harps to play.”

“Remember, the firemen are rarely necessary. The public itself stopped reading of its own accord. You firemen provide a circus now and then at which buildings are set off and crowds gather for the pretty blaze, but it’s a small sideshow indeed, and hardly necessary to keep things in line.”

“Any man’s insane who thinks he can fool the government and us.”

“We’re all afraid of it, and that’s why we need the books so badly. They’re armor. […] We’re not afraid of the firemen. We’re afraid of the knowledge these books contain.”

“If you don’t want a man unhappy politically, don’t give him two sides to a question to worry him; give him one. Better yet, give him none. Let him forget there is such a thing as war. If the government is inefficient, top-heavy, and tax-mad, better it be all those than that people worry over it.”

“The word ‘intellectual,’ of course, became the swear word it deserved to be. You always dread the unfamiliar.”

“My ‘family’ is people. They tell me things: I laugh, they laugh! And the colors!”

“If you hide your ignorance, no one will hit you and you’ll never learn.”

“When they give you lined paper, write the other way.”

“He saw his hands holding the Bible. He saw himself in the parlor with wife and children, building a family. But the dry leaves of the autumn forest were making a dry sound. The wind blew. […] He saw many hands held to the fire, hands without arms, hidden hands. (Page 153)

“Maybe the books can get us half out of the cave. They just might stop us from making the same damn insane mistakes!” LOVE FARMING QUOTES

“We cannot tell the precise moment when friendship is formed. As in filling a vessel drop by drop, there is at last a drop which makes it run over; so in a series of kindnesses there is at last one which makes the heart run over.”

“What traitors books can be! You think they’re backing you up, and they turn on you. Others can use them too, and there you are, lost in the middle of the moor, in a great welter of nouns and verbs and adjectives.”

“The good writers touch life often. The mediocre ones run a quick hand over her. The bad ones rape her and leave her for the flies.”

“We must learn to match the realities of our time. But remember, the firemen are rarely necessary. The public itself stopped reading of its own accord. […] You must understand that our civilization is so vast that we can’t have our minorities upset and stirred.”

“I don’t talk things, thought. I talk the meaning of things. I sit here and know I’m alive.”

“It was pretty silly, quoting poetry around free and easy like that. It was the act of a silly damn snob. Give a man a few lines of verse and he thinks he’s the Lord of all Creation.”

“Everyone must leave something behind when he dies, my grandfather said. A child or a book or a painting or a house or a wall built or a pair of shoes made. Or a garden planted.”

“Oh, God, what fun it was! Why, the man’s nothin’ but a scrawny little runt compared with my ‘family’, Mrs. Phelps, Mrs. Bowles!’ (Page 229)

“We’re book burners, too. We read the books and burnt them, afraid they’d be found. Microfilming didn’t pay off; we were always traveling, we didn’t want to bury the film and come back later. Always the chance of discovery.”

“We’re all lonely for something we don’t know we’re lonely for.”

“I’ve tried to imagine how it works to be you.”

“It’s not books you need, it’s some of the things that once were in books.”

“Montag, up here!” Montag floated up. ‘I’m afraid of them! They don’t stay open when I go. Well, go on, break the window, man! We’ll reach up together!’ (Page 268)