“There is more than one way to burn a book. And the world is full of people running about with lit matches.”

—  Ray Bradbury, book Fahrenheit 451

Fahrenheit 451 (1953), Coda (1979)
Context: There is more than one way to burn a book. And the world is full of people running about with lit matches. Every minority, be it Baptist/Unitarian, Irish/Italian/Octogenarian/Zen Buddhist, Zionist/Seventh-day Adventist, Women's Lib/Republican, Mattachine/FourSquareGospel feels it has the will, the right, the duty to douse the kerosene, light the fuse. Every dimwit editor who sees himself as the source of all dreary blanc-mange plain porridge unleavened literature, licks his guillotine and eyes the neck of any author who dares to speak above a whisper or write above a nursery rhyme.

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Ray Bradbury photo
Ray Bradbury401
American writer 1920–2012

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Variant translations:
Wherever books are burned, men in the end will also burn.
Where they burn books, at the end they also burn people.
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