Censorship Quotes

You have not converted a man because you have silenced him.

persuasion

I believe in censorship. I made a fortune out of it.

We must be suspicious of censors who say they mean to prohibit our art for our own welfare.

art

Censorship reflects a society's lack of confidence in itself.

free press government media press

I shall not today attempt further to define the kinds of material [pornography] . . . but I know it when I see it.

Burn the libraries, for all their value is in the koran.

Vietnam was the first war ever fought without any censorship. Without censorship, things can get terribly confused in the public mind.

Personally, I don't like pornography. But not because I fear that 'it will turn me or someone else into a raging fiend. I dislike it because? it is tasteless, embarrassing and boring. But that's no reason to ban jt If being tasteless or embarrassing pr boring were a crime, we'd have to get rid of 90 of the TV shows and hit records, close down most of.the franchise food joints, muzzle the politicians, and prohibit ..any preacher from talking more than 90 seconds.

To limit the press is to insult a nation; to prohibit reading of certain books is to declare the inhabitants to be either fools or slaves.

If we value the pursuit of knowledge, we must be free to follow wherever that search may lead us. The free mind is no barking dog to be tethered on a ten-foot chain.

Books won't stay banned. They won't burn. Ideas won't 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.

Censorship, like charity, should begin at home, but, unlike charity, it should end there.

Censorship is more depriving and corrupting than anything pornography can produce.

I am ... mortified to be told that, in the United States of America ... a question about the sale of a book can be carried before the civil magistrate. Is this then our freedom of religion? And are we to have a censor whose imprimatur shall say what books may be sold, and what we may buy? ... Whose foot is to be the measure to which ours are all to be cut or stretched? Shall a layman, simple as ourselves, set up his reason as the rule for what we are to read? It is an insult to our citizens to question whether they are rational beings or not.

If all mankind minus one were of one opinion, and only one person were of the contrary opinion, mankind would be no more justified in silencing that one person, than he, if he had the power, would be justified in silencing mankind.

The moment we begin to fear the opinions of others and hesitate to tell the truth that is in us, and from motives of policy are silent when we should speak, the divine floods of light and life no longer flow into our souls.

If a man is pictured chopping off a woman's breast, it only gets a R rating, but if, God forbid, a man is pictured kissing a woman's breast, it gets an X rating. Why is violence more acceptable than tenderness?

Freedom is absolutely necessary for the progress in science and the liberal arts.

For better or worse, editing is what editors are for: and editing is selection and choice of material. That editors-newspaper or broadcast-can and do abuse this power is beyond doubt, but that is not reason to deny the discretion Congress provided.

We can't duck our responsibilities" and permit the Government to subsidize "slime and sleaze.

Assassination is the extreme form of censorship.

As we see censorship it is a stupid giant traffic policeman answering "Yes" to "Am I my brother's copper?"

Censorship is telling a man he can't have a steak just because a baby can't chew it.

The punishment of wits enhances their authority, and a forbidden writing is thought to be a certain spark of truth that flies up in the face of them who seek to tread it out.

As to the evil which results from a censorship, it is impossible to measure it, because it is impossible to tell where it ends.

By placing discretion in the hands of an official to grant or deny a license, such a statute creates a threat of censorship that by its very existence chills free speech.

I believe that censorship grows out of fear, and because fear is contagious, some parents are easily swayed. Book banning satisfies their need to feel in control of their children's lives. This fear is often disguised as moral outrage. They want to believe that if their children don't read about it, their children won't know about it. And if they don't know about it, it won't happen.

In this age of censorship I mourn the loss of books that will never be written, I mourn the voices that will be silenced—writers' voices, teachers' voices, students' voices—and all because of fear.

There is more than one way to burn a book. And the world is full of people running about with lit matches.

The censor believes that he can hold back the mighty traffic of life with a tin whistle and a raised right hand.  For, after all, it is life with which he quarrels.

Some have said that the strongest drive is not love or hate, but the drive to censor another's opinions.

Censorship always defeats its own purpose, for it creates, in the end, the kind of society that is incapable of exercising real discretion, incapable, that is, of doing an honest or intelligent job.

Censors tend to do what only psychotics do: they confuse reality with delusion.

Don't join the book burners.  Don't think you are going to conceal thoughts by concealing evidence that they ever existed.

Every burned book or house enlightens the world.

We are willing enough to praise freedom when she is safely tucked away in the past and cannot be a nuisance,  In the present, amidst dangers whose outcomes we cannot foresee, we get nervous about her, and admit censorship.

What progress we are making.  In the Middle Ages, they would have burned me.  Now they are content with burning my books.

Censorship and democracy Don't mix, and there is no argument in favor or censorship that does not assume an antidemocratic social tendency.

However rationalized it may be censorship is always an attack on human intelligence and imagination and is always a sign of weakness, not strength, in those who enforce it.

The only way to forestall the work of criticism is through censorship, which has the same relation to criticism that lynching has to justice.

Censorship is to art what lynching is to justice.

The Net interprets censorship as damage and routes around it.

Where there is official censorship it is a sign that speech is serious.  Where there is none, it is pretty certain that the official spokesmen have all the loudspeakers.

Censorship may have to do with literature; but literature has nothing whatever to do with censorship.

Censorship is never over for those who have experienced it.  It is a brand on the imagination that affects the individual who has suffered it, forever.

Censorship is the height of vanity.

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.

To portray only what you would like to be true is the beginning of censorship.

Wherever books will be burned, men also, will be burned.

Censorship, like charity, should begin at home; but unlike charity, it should end there.

We can never be sure that the opinion we are endeavoring to stifle is a false opinion; and if we were sure, stifling it would be an evil still.

As good almost kill a man as kill a good book: who kills a man kills a reasonable creature, God's image; but he who destroys a good book, kills reason itself, kills the image of God, as it were, in the eye.

What is freedom of expression?  Without the freedom to offend, it ceases to exist.

freedom of speech freedom

An attack upon our ability to tell stories is not just censorship—it is a crime against our nature as human beings.

Heretical views arise when the truth is uncertain, and it is only when the truth is uncertain that censorship is invoked.

All censorships exist to prevent anyone from challenging current conceptions and existing institutions.  All progress is initiated by challenging current conceptions, and executed by supplanting existing institutions.  Consequently the first condition of progress is the removal of censorship.

Censorship reflects a society's lack of confidence in itself. It is a hallmark of an authoritarian regime.

Those who want the Government to regulate matters of the mind and spirit are like men who are so afraid of being murdered that they commit suicide to avoid assassination.

But the truth is, that when a Library expels a book of mine and leaves an unexpurgated Bible lying around where unprotected youth and age can get hold of it, the deep unconscious irony of it delights me and does't anger me.

The censor's sword pierces deeply into the heart of free expression.

freedom freedom of speech

I believe in censorship.  After all, I made a fortune out of it.

Censorship made me.

The dirtiest book in all the world is the expurgated book.