1644 John Milton
Give me the liberty to know, to utter and to argue freely, according to conscience, above all liberties. . . . And though all the winds of doctrine were let loose to play upon the earth, so Truth be in the field, we do injuriously by licensing and prohibiting, to mis-doubt her strength. Let her and falsehood grapple. Who ever knew Truth put to the worse in a free and open encounter?
We should be wary . . .how we spill that seasoned life of man, preserved and stored up in books; since we see a kind of homocide may be thus committed, sometime a martyrdom . . . a kind of massacre, whereof the execution ends not in the slaying of an elemental life, but strikes at . . . the breath of reason itself; slay an immortality rather than life. . . .
Methinks I see in my mind, a noble . . . nation rousing herself like a strong man after sleep and shaking her invincible locks. . . . Books are not absolutely dead things, but so contain a progeny of life in them to be as activie as that soul whose progeny they are. . . . I know they are lively, and as vigorously productive as those fabulous dragon’s teeth; and being sown up and down, may chance to spring up armed men.
