Alfred Whitney Griswold

It is a barren kind of criticism which tells you what a thing is not.

— Alfred Whitney Griswold

Things have got to be wrong in order that they may be deplored.

— Alfred Whitney Griswold

Books wont stay banned. They wont burn. Ideas wont go to jail. In the long run of history, the censor and the inquisitor have always lost. The only sure weapon against bad ideas is better ideas. The source of better ideas is wisdom. The surest path to wisdom is a liberal education.

— Alfred Whitney Griswold

Could Hamlet have been written by a committee, or the Mona Lisa painted by a club? Could the New Testament have been composed as a conference report? Creative ideas do not spring from groups. They spring from individuals. The divine spark leaps from the finger of God to the finger of Adam, whether it takes ultimate shape in a law of physics or a law of the land, a poem or a policy, a sonata or a mechanical computer.

— Alfred Whitney Griswold