The freedom to read is essential to our democracy. It is continuously under attack. Private
groups and public authorities in various parts of the country are working to remove books from
sale, to censor textbooks, to label "controversial" books, to distribute lists of "objectionable"
books or authors, and to purge libraries. These actions apparently rise from a view that our
national tradition of free expression is no longer valid; that censorship and suppression are
needed to avoid the subversion of politics and the corruption of morals. We, as citizens devoted
to the use of books and as librarians and publishers responsible for disseminating them, wish to
assert the public interest in the preservation of the freedom to read.
We are deeply concerned about these attempts at suppression. Most such attempts rest on a
denial of the fundamental premise of democracy: that the ordinary citizen, by exercising his
critical judgment, will accept the good and reject the bad. The censors, public and private,
assume that they should determine what is good and what is bad for their fellow-citizens.
We trust Americans to recognize propaganda, and to reject it. We do not believe they need the
help of censors to assist them in this task. We do not believe they are prepared to sacrifice their
heritage of a free press in order to be "protected" against what others think may be bad for
them. We believe they still favor free enterprise in ideas and expression.
We are aware, of course, that books are not alone in being subjected to efforts at suppression.
We are aware that these efforts are related to a larger pattern of pressures being brought
against education, the press, films, radio, and television. The problem is not only one of actual
censorship. The shadow of fear cast by these pressures leads, we suspect, to an even larger
voluntary curtailment of expression by those who seek to avoid controversy.
Such pressure toward conformity is perhaps natural to a time of uneasy change and pervading
fear. Especially when so many of our apprehensions are directed against an ideology, the
expression of a dissident idea becomes a thing feared in itself, and we tend to move against it
as against a hostile deed, with suppression.
And yet suppression is never more dangerous than in such a time of social tension. Freedom
has given the United States the elasticity to endure strain. Freedom keeps open the path of
novel and creative solutions, and enables change to come by choice. Every silencing of a
heresy, every enforcement of an orthodoxy, diminishes the toughness and resilience of our
society and leaves it the less able to deal with stress.
Now as always in our history, books are among our greatest instruments of freedom. They are
almost the only means for making generally available ideas or manners of expression that can
initially command only a small audience. They are the natural medium for the new idea and the
untried voice from which come the original contributions to social growth. They are essential to
the extended discussion which serious thought requires, and to the accumulation of knowledge
and ideas into organized collections.
We believe that free communication is essential to the preservation of a free society and a
creative culture. We believe that these pressures towards conformity present the danger of
limiting the range and variety of inquiry and expression on which our democracy and our culture
depend. We believe that every American community must jealously guard the freedom to
publish and to circulate, in order to preserve its own freedom to read. We believe that publishers
and librarians have a profound responsibility to give validity to that freedom to read by making it
possible for the readers to choose freely from a variety of offerings.
The freedom to read is guaranteed by the Constitution. Those with faith in free men will stand
firm on these constitutional guarantees of essential rights and will exercise the responsibilities
that accompany these rights.
We therefore affirm these propositions:
1. It is in the public’s interest for publishers and librarians to make available the widest
diversity of views and expressions, including those which are unorthodox or unpopular with
the majority.
Creative thought is by definition new, and what is new is different. The bearer of every new
thought is a rebel until his idea is refined and tested. Totalitarian systems attempt to
maintain themselves in power by the ruthless suppression of any concept which challenges
the established orthodoxy. The power of a democratic system to adapt to change is vastly
strengthened by the freedom of its citizens to choose wisely from among conflicting
opinions offered freely to them. To stifle every nonconformist idea at birth would mark the
end of the democratic process. Furthermore, only through the constant activity of weighing
and selecting can the democratic mind attain the strength demanded by times like these.
We need to know not only what we believe, but why we believe it.
2. Publishers, librarians, and booksellers do not need to endorse every idea or presentation
contained in the books they make available. It would conflict with the public interest for them
to establish their own political, moral, or aesthetic views as a standard for determining what
books should be published or circulated.
Publishers and librarians serve the educational process by helping to make available
knowledge and ideas required for the growth of the mind and the increase of learning. They
do not foster education by imposing as mentors the patterns of their own thought. The
people should have the freedom to read and consider a broader range of ideas than those
that may be held by any single librarian or publisher or government or church. It is wrong
that what one man can read should be confined to what another thinks proper.
3. It is contrary to the public interest for publishers or librarians to determine the acceptability
of a book on the basis of the personal history or political affiliations of the author.
A book should be judged as a book. No art or literature can flourish if it is to be measured
by the political views or private lives of its creators. No society of free men can flourish
which draws up lists of writers to whom it will not listen, whatever they may have to say.
4. There is no place in our society for efforts to coerce the taste of others, to confine adults to
the reading matter deemed suitable for adolescents, or to inhibit the efforts of writers to
achieve artistic expression.
To some, much of modern literature is shocking. But is not much of life itself shocking? We
cut off literature at the source if we prevent writers from dealing with the stuff of life. Parents
and teachers have a responsibility to prepare the young to meet the diversity of
experiences in life to which they will be exposed, as they have a responsibility to help them
learn to think critically for themselves. These are affirmative responsibilities, not to be
discharged simply by preventing them from reading works for which they are not yet
prepared. In these matters, taste differs, and taste cannot be legislated; nor can machinery
be devised which will suit the demands of one group without limiting the freedom of others.
5. It is not in the public interest to force a reader to accept with any book the prejudgment of a
label characterizing the book or author as subversive or dangerous.
The idea of labeling presupposes the existence of individuals or groups with wisdom to
determine by authority what is good or bad for the citizen. It presupposes that each
individual must be directed in making up his mind about the ideas he examines. But
Americans do not need others to do their thinking for them.
6. It is the responsibility of publishers and librarians, as guardians of the people’s freedom, to
contest encroachments upon that freedom by individuals or groups seeking to impose their
own standards or tastes upon the community at large.
It is inevitable in the give and take of the democratic process that the political, the moral, or
the aesthetic concepts of an individual or group will occasionally collide with those of
another individual or group. In a free society each individual is free to determine for himself
what he wishes to read, and each group is free to determine what it will recommend to its
freely associated members. But no group has the right to take the law into its own hands,
and to impose its own concept of politics or morality upon other members of a democratic
society. Freedom is no freedom if it is accorded only to the accepted and the inoffensive.
7. It is the responsibility of publishers and librarians to give full meaning to the freedom to
read by providing books that enrich the quality and diversity of thought and expression. By
the exercise of this affirmative responsibility, bookmen can demonstrate that the answer to a
bad book is a good one, the answer to a bad idea is a good one.
The freedom to read is of little consequence when expended on the trivial; it is frustrated
when the reader cannot obtain matter fit for his purpose. What is needed is not only the
absence of restraint, but the positive provision of opportunity for the people to read the best
that has been thought and said. Books are the major channel by which the intellectual
inheritance is handed down, and the principal means of its testing and growth. The defense
of their freedom and integrity, and the enlargement of their service to society, requires of all
bookmen the utmost of their faculties, and deserves of all citizens the fullest of their support.
We state these propositions neither lightly nor as easy generalizations. We here stake out a lofty
claim for the value of books. We do so because we believe that they are good, possessed of
enormous variety and usefulness, worthy of cherishing and keeping free. We realize that the
application of these propositions may mean the dissemination of ideas and manners of
expression that are repugnant to many persons. We do not state these propositions in the
comfortable belief that what people read is unimportant. We believe rather that what people
read is deeply important; that ideas can be dangerous; but that the suppression of ideas is fatal
to a democratic society. Freedom itself is a dangerous way of life, but it is ours.
This statement was originally issued in May of 1953 by the Westchester Conference of the
American Library Association and the American Book Publishers Council, which in 1970
consolidated with the American Educational Publishers Institute to become the Association of
American Publishers.
Adopted June 25, 1953, by the ALA Council and the AAP Freedom to Read Committee;
amended January 28, 1972; January 16, 1991; July 12, 2000; June 30, 2004.