Das war ein vorspeil nur; That was only a prelude; dort wo man Buecher verbrennt, Where one burns books, vebrennt man auch am Ende One will also burn people Menchen. Eventually.
Heinrich HeineRead
Where books are burned in the end people will be burned too.
Interpretation
What this quote means
Censorship of books can lead to a greater loss of freedom and human rights.
Heinrich Heine's quote warns that the act of burning books signifies a suppression of ideas, which ultimately leads to the erosion of society's freedoms and the potential for violence against people who hold those ideas. It reflects the dangerous consequences of censoring knowledge and the inevitability of societal decay that follows such actions.
Themes
CensorshipFreedomKnowledgeViolenceSociety
In practice
Example use cases
During a speech about the importance of education and free thought.
More from Heinrich Heine
All quotes βLife is all too wondrous sweet, and the world is so beautifully bewildered; it is the dream of an intoxicated divinity.
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Wherever they burn books they will also, in the end, burn human beings.
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I care little in the existence of a heaven or hell; self respect does not allow me to guide my acts with an eye toward heavenly salvation or hellish punishment. I pursue the good in life because it is beautiful and attracts me; and shun the bad because it is ugly and repulsive. All our acts should originate from the spring of unselfish love, whether there be a continuation after death or not.
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I wept in my dreams. I dreamed you lay in the grave; I awoke, and the tears still poured down my cheeks. I wept in my dreams, I dreamed you had left me; I awoke and I went on weeping long and bitterly. I wept in my dreams, I dreamed you were still kind to me; I awoke, and still the flow of my tears streams on.
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Oh, they loved dearly: their souls kissed, they kissed with their eyes, they were both but one single kiss.
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