They say that Caliph Omar, when consulted about what had to be done with the library of Alexandria, answered as follows: 'If the books of this library contain matters opposed to the Koran, they are bad and must be burned. If they contain only the doctrine of the Koran, burn them anyway, for they are superfluous.' Our learned men have cited this reasoning as the height of absurdity. However, suppose Gregory the Great was there instead of Omar and the Gospel instead of the Koran. The library would still have been burned, and that might well have been the finest moment in the life of this illustrious pontiff.

If they succeed in destroying our books or even making many of them inaccessible, there will be a chilling effect on the hundreds of other libraries that lend digitized books as we do. This could be the burning of the Library of Alexandria moment—millions of books from our community's libraries—gone.

I suppose you burned the library—barbarians always do.

Sultan Alla-ud-din Khilji burnt the famous library at Anhalwara Patan. The Tarikh Firoz Shahi says that Firoz Shah Tughlak burnt a large library of Sanskrit books at Kohana.

By burning Luther's books you may rid your bookshelves of him, but you will not rid men's minds of him.

"Do you ever read any of the books you burn?"
He laughed. "That's against the law!"
"Oh. Of course."

It seemed to me that I had no right to burn a book I hadn't even read.

He snatched the book from me and replaced it hastily on its shelf, muttering that if one brick was removed the whole library was liable to collapse.

[Writers] are feared by every tyrant — who shows his fear by burning the books and destroying the individuals.

Soy enemigo de todos los libros, y si pudiera destruir los míos, no dejaría de hacerlo.

Pouring out liquor is like burning books.

When ya done ransackin' his room,
Grabbin' any-damn-thing that shines,
Throw the scraps down on the street,
Like all his books and his notes.
All his books and his notes and all the junk that he wrote,
The whole fucken lot goes right up in smoke.

A copy of Dante's Purgatorio excited his especial disgust. "French, eh?" he said. "I guessed as much, and pretty dirty too, I shouldn't wonder. Now just you wait while I look up these here books"—how he said it!—"in my list. Particularly against books the Home Secretary is. If we can't stamp out literature in the country, we can at least stop its being brought in from outside."

Where they burn books they will in the end burn people too