Voltaire

The operation of burning it was perhaps as odious as that of writing it.… If the book was dangerous, it should have been refuted. To burn a book of argument is to say: ‘We do not have enough wit to reply to it.’

François-​Marie Arouet, self-​styled as Voltaire, referring to the burning of Jean-​Jacques Rousseau’s Du contrat social in Geneva, in his undated pamphlet, Idées républicaines (Republican ideas).