Roosevelt argues that political freedom depends partly on people having access to education and independent sources of information. Without the knowledge needed to understand events and compare ideas, citizens are less able to make informed judgements. She therefore presents restrictions on education and information not simply as intellectual limitations, but as methods through which political power can be strengthened and opposition weakened.

The quotation also distinguishes between denying people the means to learn and controlling what an educated population is permitted to read, hear or discuss. Referring to Nazi Germany, Roosevelt points to book burning and control of communications as ways of restricting the circulation of ideas. Her broader argument is that freedom of thought and expression are closely connected to democratic self-government: people need access to competing views if they are to form their own conclusions rather than depend on information selected by those in power.

Full quotation

“In the democracies of the world, the passion for freedom of speech and of thought is always accentuated when there is an effort anywhere to keep ideas away from people and to prevent them from making their own decisions. One of the best ways of enslaving a people is to keep them from education and thus make it impossible for them to understand what is going on in the world as a whole.

In the case of Germany, however, the people have always had the tools of learning. They have been a highly educated nation. Hitler had to use other methods, and he chose to go back to the practices of medieval days and burn the books whose philosophies were opposed to his. He knew that if these thoughts reached the people, they might stir up unrest and opposition to his own regime.

The second way of enslaving a people is to suppress the sources of information, not only by burning books, but by controlling all the other ways in which ideas are transmitted. Hitler used all of these methods and gained his ends within Germany for a time. In the end, and that end seems to be drawing closer every day, the people whom Hitler has enslaved will have to come in contact again with the world of free expression and thought, then Hitler will have to face the judgment of his own people.”