97 Quotes About Censorship

One of the most controversial issues in our society today is the right to free speech. Unfortunately, many people have been censored for their opinions and thoughts – by both big businesses and government agencies. This collection of censored quotes is a powerful reminder that free speech is a fundamental right for all people – even those who disagree with you or have been offended by your words.

1
Adam was but human–this explains it all. He did not want the apple for the apple's sake, he wanted it only because it was forbidden. The mistake was in not forbidding the serpent; then he would have eaten the serpent. Mark Twain
2
It's now very common to hear people say, 'I'm rather offended by that.' As if that gives them certain rights. It's actually nothing more... than a whine. 'I find that offensive.' It has no meaning; it has no purpose; it has no reason to be respected as a phrase. 'I am offended by that.' Well, so fucking what.", The Guardian, 5 June 2005] Stephen Fry
Digression is the soul of wit. Take the philosophic asides...
3
Digression is the soul of wit. Take the philosophic asides away from Dante, Milton or Hamlet's father's ghost and what stays is dry bones. Ray Bradbury
4
Calling sex by its name thereafter [the 17th c.] became more difficult and more costly. As if in order to gain mastery of it in reality, it had first been necessary to subjugate it at the level of language, control its free circulation in speech, expunge it from the things that were said, and extinguish the words that rendered it too visibly present. Michel Foucault
You may silence the critics, but you don't silence the...
5
You may silence the critics, but you don't silence the pain. Anthony T. Hincks
When truth is replaced by silence, the silence is a...
6
When truth is replaced by silence, the silence is a lie. Yevgeny Yevtushenko
What cannot be said above all must not be silenced...
7
What cannot be said above all must not be silenced but written. Jacques Derrida
8
If we really saw war, what war does to young minds and bodies, it would be impossible to embrace the myth of war. If we had to stand over the mangled corpses of schoolchildren killed in Afghanistan and listen to the wails of their parents, we would not be able to repeat clichés we use to justify war. This is why war is carefully sanitized. This is why we are given war's perverse and dark thrill but are spared from seeing war's consequences. The mythic visions of war keep it heroic and entertaining… The wounded, the crippled, and the dead are, in this great charade, swiftly carted offstage. They are war's refuse. We do not see them. We do not hear them. They are doomed, like wandering spirits, to float around the edges of our consciousness, ignored, even reviled. The message they tell is too painful for us to hear. We prefer to celebrate ourselves and our nation by imbibing the myths of glory, honor, patriotism, and heroism, words that in combat become empty and meaningless. Chris Hedges
9
I was winning awards, getting raises, lecturing college classes, appearing on TV shows, and judging journalism contests. And then I wrote some stories that made me realize how sadly misplaced my bliss had been. The reason I'd enjoyed such smooth sailing for so long hadn't been, as I'd assumed, because I was careful and diligent and good at my job.. The truth was that, in all those years, I hadn't written anything important enough to suppress. . Gary Webb
If the partridge didn't call at the wrong moment, Neither...
10
If the partridge didn't call at the wrong moment, Neither the hunter nor the falcon would know of it. It follows from this point also, That everyone's voice betrays him. Rahman Baba
Poems are difficult to silence.
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Poems are difficult to silence. Stephen Greenblatt
Who is more to be pitied, a writer bound and...
12
Who is more to be pitied, a writer bound and gagged by policemen or one living in perfect freedom who has nothing more to say? Kurt Vonnegut Jr.
Freedom of the press is limited to those who own...
13
Freedom of the press is limited to those who own one. A.J. Liebling
14
Digressions, incontestably, are the sunshine, the life, the soul of reading! Take them out and one cold eternal winter would reign in every page. Restore them to the writer - he steps forth like a bridegroom, bids them all-hail, brings in variety and forbids the appetite to fail. Laurence Sterne
You can never talk religion on network TV. It makes...
15
You can never talk religion on network TV. It makes too many people angry. You can talk about sex. Craig Ferguson
Religion grants its adherents malign, intoxicating and morally corrosive sensations....
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Religion grants its adherents malign, intoxicating and morally corrosive sensations. Destroying intellectual freedom is always evil, but only religion makes doing evil feel quite so good. Philip Pullman
17
La historia no ha cambiado. Hace mil anos ellos eran los duenos del mundo. Hoy en dia lo siguen siendo. Claro, lo tienen que compartir con los grandes magnates de la tierra, esos que controlan el petroleo, las drogas, la tecnologia y por supuesto la television y la radio. La Iglesia domina los miedos y la promesa de la salvacion; las grandes empresas tambien manipulan los miedos y los paliativos para estos: la satisfaccion de las necesidades basicas - y las no tan basicas que hoy en dia parecen primordiales: carro, casa, belleza y entretenimiento - , una via directa al consimismo. Ambos en busca de lo mismo, la minipulacion del pueblo que los lleva a la gallina de los huevos de oro: el dinero de las masas. No es causalidad que la gente no quiera pensar. La Iglesia se encargo por siglos de esto, evitando la lectura de cualquier cosa que no fuese su religion. Desde Aristoteles, Ovidio, Pitagoras, Platon, Socrates, Antistenes, Heraclito, hasta Voltaire, Huxley, Hesse, Sade, Maquiavelo, Rousseau, Nietzsche, Dumas, entre otros, fueron censurados. Antonio Guadarrama
I also hold very strong personal convictions about censorship. I...
18
I also hold very strong personal convictions about censorship. I don't believe in forbidden knowledge. Andrea Cremer
19
Q. You do not consider your statement a disloyal one? A. No, sir. Scientific truth is beyond loyalty and disloyalty. Q. Can you prove that this mathematics is valid? A. Only to another mathematician. Q. Your claim then is that your truth is of so esoteric a nature that it is beyond the understanding of a plain man. It seems to me that truth should be clearer than that, less mysterious, more open to the mind. A. It presents no difficulties to some minds. The physics of energy transfer, which we know as thermodynamics, has been clear and true through all the history of man since the mythical ages, yet there may be people present who would find it impossible to design a power engine. People of high intelligence, too. Isaac Asimov
20
All these people talk so eloquently about getting back to good old-fashioned values. Well, as an old poop I can remember back to when we had those old-fashioned values, and I say let's get back to the good old-fashioned First Amendment of the good old-fashioned Constitution of the United States -- and to hell with the censors! Give me knowledge or give me death! Kurt Vonnegut Jr.
21
They began by controlling books of cartoons and then detective books and, of course, films, one way or another, one group or another, political bias, religious prejudice, union pressure; there was always a minority afraid of something, and a great majority afraid of the dark, afraid of the future, afraid of the past, afraid of the present, afraid of themselves and shadows of themselves. Ray Bradbury
Free societies...are societies in motion, and with motion comes tension,...
22
Free societies...are societies in motion, and with motion comes tension, dissent, friction. Free people strike sparks, and those sparks are the best evidence of freedom's existence. Salman Rushdie
Freiheit ist immer die Freiheit des AndersdenkendenFreedom is always, and...
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Freiheit ist immer die Freiheit des AndersdenkendenFreedom is always, and exclusively, freedom for the one who thinks differently. Rosa Luxemburg
24
The amount of violations of human rights in a country is always an inverse function of the amount of complaints about human rights violations heard from there. The greater the number of complaints being aired, the better protected are human rights in that country. Daniel Patrick Moynihan
25
I once had a mind of quicksand, That dragged ideas into its depths, Inhaling specks of sunlight, Every time I drew a breath, But the world thought me a hazard, When every word I spoke, I meant, So around me they put caution tape, And filled me with cement. Erin Hanson
26
Sometimes when a father has an ugly, loutish son, the love he bears him so blindfolds his eyes that he does not see his defects, or, rather, takes them for gifts and charms of mind and body, and talks of them to his friends as wit and grace. I, however–for though I pass for the father, I am but the stepfather to "Don Quixote"–have no desire to go with the current of custom, or to implore thee, dearest reader, almost with tears in my eyes, as others do, to pardon or excuse the defects thou wilt perceive in this child of mine. Thou art neither its kinsman nor its friend, thy soul is thine own and thy will as free as any man's, whate'er he be, thou art in thine own house and master of it as much as the king of his taxes and thou knowest the common saying, "Under my cloak I kill the king;" all which exempts and frees thee from every consideration and obligation, and thou canst say what thou wilt of the story without fear of being abused for any ill or rewarded for any good thou mayest say of it. Unknown
27
It's now very common to hear people say, 'I'm rather offended by that.' As if that gives them certain rights. It's actually nothing more... than a whine. 'I find that offensive.' It has no meaning; it has no purpose; it has no reason to be respected as a phrase. 'I am offended by that.' Well, so fucking Stephen Fry
28
Once a government is committed to the principle of silencing the voice of opposition, it has only one way to go, and that is down the path of increasingly repressive measures, until it becomes a source of terror to all its citizens and creates a country where everyone lives in Harry Truman
29
If truth is not to be spoken, Sir, in a government, calling itself free, least it should be understood by the people, who are governed; and prevent their freely supplying the oil, that facilitates the movement of the cumbrous machine– If facts, which cannot be denied, be repressed; and reason, which cannot be controverted, be stifled; the time is not far distant, when such a country may say, adieu liberty! . Charlotte Turner Smith
30
I believe that if a seven-year old kid has heard of Naked Lunch and is daring enough to want to read it, he’s old enough to read it. John Waters
31
As centuries of dictators have known, an illiterate crowd is the easiest to rule; since the craft of reading cannot be untaught once it has been acquired, the second-best recourse is to limit its scope. Alberto Manguel
32
Whether or not it is dangerous to read Sade is a question that easily becomes lost in a multitude of others and has never been settled except by those whose arguments are rooted in the conviction that reading leads to trouble. So it does; so it must, for reading leads nowhere but to questions. Richard Seaver
33
One cannot and must not try to erase the past merely because it does not fit the present. Golda Meir
34
Of course it was not only the law that interfered with our management of the paper. The politicians, too, soon took a hand. The Oberpräsident of Schleswig-Holstein, a man named Kürbis (which is German for pumpkin) forbad its publication; it appeared the next day, entitled Die Westküste [The West Coat]. This too was banned, and for a short time my brother's wish was fulfilled and we edited Die Grüne Front. I, too, had the gratification of seeing my original suggestion realised whn it became, in due course, Die Sturmglocke. Finally, the Oberpräsident forbad us from publishing any paper at all which was not purely concerned with technical agricultural matters. So we rechristened it Der Kürbis, aand the leading article consisted of variations on the subject of pumpking as given in the encyclopaedia; we expatiated on how pumkins flourish best in plenty of dung and on the disagreeable nature of their blossom's scwent. Thenceforth the paper resumed its original name of Das Landvolk and that was that. Ernst Von Salomon
35
When one writer tries to silence another, he silences every writer-and in the end he also silences himself. David Leavitt
36
It says a lot about Sandberg’s brand of feminism that this campaign focuses on policing language rather than bringing attention to important issues that have real impact on women and girls Jessica Roy
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A society that gets rid of all its troublemakers goes downhill. Robert A. Heinlein
38
And no matter how much the gray people in power despise knowledge, they can’t do anything about historical objectivity; they can slow it down, but they can’t stop it. Despising and fearing knowledge, they will nonetheless inevitably decide to promote it in order to survive. Sooner or later they will be forced to allow universities and scientific societies, to create research centers, observatories, and laboratories, and thus to create a cadre of people of thought and knowledge: people who are completely beyond their control, people with a completely different psychology and with completely different needs. And these people cannot exist and certainly cannot function in the former atmosphere of low self-interest, banal preoccupations, dull self-satisfaction, and purely carnal needs. They need a new atmosphere– an atmosphere of comprehensive and inclusive learning, permeated with creative tension; they need writers, artists, composers– and the gray people in power are forced to make this concession too. The obstinate ones will be swept aside by their more cunning opponents in the struggle for power, but those who make this concession are, inevitably and paradoxically, digging their own graves against their will. For fatal to the ignorant egoists and fanatics is the growth of a full range of culture in the people– from research in the natural sciences to the ability to marvel at great music. And then comes the associated process of the broad intellectualization of society: an era in which grayness fights its last battles with a brutality that takes humanity back to the middle ages, loses these battles, and forever disappears as an actual force. Arkady Strugatsky
39
The idea that you have to be protected from any kind of uncomfortable emotion is what I absolutely do not subscribe to. John Cleese
40
Orwell's short and intense life has for years borne witness to some of those verities of which we were already aware. Parties and churches and states cannot be honest, but individuals can. Real books cannot be written by machines or committees. The truth is not always easy to discern, but a lie can and must be called by its right name. And the imagination, like certain wild animals, as Orwell himself once put it, will not breed in captivity. Actually, that last metaphor is beautiful but inaccurate. Even in the most dire conditions, there is a human will to resist coercion. We must believe that even now in North Korea, there are ideas alive inside human brains that were not put there by any authority. Christopher Hitchens
41
AND where did the books go when the world turned against them? When the flames of wrath blackened their pages and erased the words, they fled to find solace and redemption in the dark places of the world.“ They were exiled into darkness so their own light might one day return to illuminate the world. They went underground, literally and metaphorically, so that their haven became the hidden places far beneath the feet of their persecutors.“ Thus was born the Incunabula: it was forged by fire and persecution, to preserve and protect until the book might rise, Phoenix-like, from the ashes of demise. Mark Cantrell
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Sleeping beauty awoke at the kiss of a scientist and expired at the fatal puncture of his syringe. Ray Bradbury
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The term "political correctness" has always appalled me, reminding me of Orwell's "Thought Police" and fascist regimes. Helmut Newton
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Even in societies where words are often strictly controlled, messages diverse never die. Resembling seeds scattered here and there, they find all manner of cracks and crevices to root. William E. Jefferson
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You're sad but you hold everything back... Donna Lynn Hope
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So yes, I say things I regret constantly, and I just can't help it. Kathy Griffin
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It is not necessary to conceal anything from a public insensible to contradiction and narcotized by technological diversions. Neil Postman
48
A mature society is one that reserves its moral outrage for what really matters: poverty and preventable diseases in the third world, arms sales, oppression, injustice. Bad language and sex might offend some, who certainly have a right to complain; but they do not have a right to censor. They do not have to watch or listen if they are offended: they have an 'off' button on their television sets and radios. After all, it is morally outrageous that moral outrage should be used as an excuse to perpetrate the outrage of censorship on others. . A.C. Grayling
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If you can't say "Fuck" you can't say, "Fuck the government. Lenny Bruce
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It didn't come from the Government down. There was no dictum, no declaration, no censorship, to start with, no! Technology, mass exploitation, and minority pressure carried the trick, thank God. Ray Bradbury
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In short, whoever does violence to truth or its expression eventually mutilates justice, even though he thinks he is serving it. From this point of view, we shall deny to the very end that a press is true because it is revolutionary; it will be revolutionary only if it is true, and never otherwise. Albert Camus
52
That said, the question remains: how to strike the balance between free speech and mutual respect in this mixed-up world, both blessed and cursed with instant communication? We should not fight fire with fire, threats with threats. Timothy Garton Ash
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The author determines that the bitterest struggles are for one side of the truth to the suppression of the other side. Edith Hamilton
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A safe and inclusive society is worthless if a person cannot speak their mind. Censorship and manufactured outrage are the problem and not the solution. Carmine Savastano
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The moment you say that any idea system is sacred, whether it’s a religious belief system or a secular ideology, the moment you declare a set of ideas to be immune from criticism, satire, derision, or contempt, freedom of thought becomes imposs Salman Rushdie
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Now let's take up the minorities in our civilisation, shall we? Bigger the population, the more minorities. Don't step on the toes of the dog-lovers, the cat-lovers, doctors, lawyers, merchants, chiefs, Mormons, Baptists, Unitarians, second-generation Chinese, Swedes, Italians, Germans, Texans, Brooklynites, Irishmen, people from Oregon or Mexico. The people in this book, this play, this TV serial are not meant to represent any actual painters, cartographers, mechanics anywhere. The bigger your market, Montag, the less you handle controversy, remember that!. Ray Bradbury
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I loathe it when they [English teachers] are bullied by no-nothing parents or cowardly school boards. Pat Conroy
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If you believe that I'm a cop killer, you believe David Bowie is an astronaut. IceT
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The only valid censorship of ideas is the right of people not to listen. Tommy Smothers
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At CBS, I’m in your house. I’m mindful of that. When I do standup, you’re in my home and I can say what I want to. Craig Ferguson
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Withholding information is the essence of tyranny. Control of the flow of information is the tool of the dictatorship. Bruce Coville
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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. George Bernard Shaw
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Irreverence is our only sacred cow. Paul Krassner
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The struggle for a free intelligence has always been a struggle between the ironic and the literal mind. Christopher Hitchens
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Nick chided a censor, who wished some books gone, and suggested she scan Fahrenheit 451. For the book-budget cutters, Old Claus had no plan, cause if they could read, they just read Ayn Rand. David Davis
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[M]an is not permitted without censure to follow his own thoughts in the search of truth, when they lead him ever so little out of the common road. John Locke
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Critical voices have to care about history. We have to care about the way in which things get controlled in the past because that's when the damage gets done and if we don't keep that historical memory, we will allow them to do it again next time. Martin Baker
68
American society has willfully deleted the fact of homosexual behavior from its mind, laundering things as they come along, in order to maintain a more comfortable illusion. The censors removed it; the critics said, "Well, look! It isn't there"; and anyone who still saw it was labeled a pervert Vito Russo
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In order to become the chisel that breaks the marble inside us, the artist must first become the hammer." [Soviet censor of paintings and photos] Anthony Marra
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Our country is the only one that truly permits you to speak bad of your country, so you really shouldn’t say anything bad about it. James Rozoff
71
The sinister fact about literary censorship in England is that it is largely voluntary. Unpopular ideas can be silenced, and inconvenient facts kept dark, without the need for any official ban. Anyone who has lived long in a foreign country will know of instances of sensational items of news – things which on their own merits would get the big headlines-being kept right out of the British press, not because the Government intervened but because of a general tacit agreement that ‘it wouldn’t do’ to mention that particular fact. So far as the daily newspapers go, this is easy to understand. The British press is extremely centralised, and most of it is owned by wealthy men who have every motive to be dishonest on certain important topics. But the same kind of veiled censorship also operates in books and periodicals, as well as in plays, films and radio. At any given moment there is an orthodoxy, a body of ideas which it is assumed that all right-thinking people will accept without question. It is not exactly forbidden to say this, that or the other, but it is ‘not done’ to say it, just as in mid- Victorian times it was ‘not done’ to mention trousers in the presence of a lady. Anyone who challenges the prevailing orthodoxy finds himself silenced with surprising effectiveness. A genuinely unfashionable opinion is almost never given a fair hearing, either in the popular press or in the highbrow periodicals. . George Orwell
72
In the past, censorship worked by blocking the flow of information. In the 21st century, censorship works by flooding people with irrelevant information. People just don't know what to pay attention to, and they often spend their time investigating and debating side issues. Yuval Noah Harari
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Information is the oxygen of the modern age. It seeps through the walls topped by barbed wire, it wafts across the electrified borders.... The Goliath of totalitarianism will be brought down by the David of the microchip. Ronald Reagan
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This could seem counterintuitive for many dictators running communist or socialist single-party states, but a thriving private tech industry can contribute invaluable tools to help you implement a controllable internet. The reason is fairly simple: the technologies that transform internet applications into more personalized, efficient and enjoyable experiences are usually the same ones that increase the capacity to monitor its users. Laurier Rochon
75
Everything that was not so must go. All the beautiful literary lies and flights of fancy must be shot in mid-air! So they lined them up against a library wall one Sunday morning thirty years ago, in 2006; they lined them up, St. Nicholas and the Headless Horseman and Snow White and Rumpelstiltskin and Mother Goose--oh, what a wailing! --and shot them down, and burned the paper castles and the fairy frogs and old kings and the people who lived happily ever after (for of course it was a fact that nobody lived happily ever after! ), and Once Upon A Time became No More! And they spread the ashes of the Phantom Rickshaw with the rubble of the Land of Oz; they filleted the bones of Glinda the Good and Ozma and the shattered Polychrome in a spectroscope and served Jack Pumpkinhead with meringue at the Biologists' Ball! The Beanstalk died in a bramble of red tape! Sleeping Beauty awoke at the kiss of a scientist and expired at a fatal puncture of his syringe. And they made Alice drink something from a bottle which reduced her to a size where she could no longer cry 'Curiouser and curioser, ' and they gave the Looking Glass one hammer blow to smash it and every Red King and Oyster away!. Ray Bradbury
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I wrote a song about dental floss but did anyone's teeth get cleaner? Frank Zappa
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[O]ne man's vulgarity is another's lyric. John Marshall Harlan
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The real heroes are the librarians and teachers who at no small risk to themselves refuse to lie down and play dead for censors. Bruce Coville
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In a society run by terror, no statements whatsoever can be taken seriously. They are all forced, and it is the duty of every honest man to ignore them. Milan Kundera
80
It is the press, above all, which wages a positively fanatical and slanderous struggle, tearing down everything which can be regarded as a support of national independence, cultural elevation, and the economic independence of the nation. Adolf Hitler
81
The local liberal press, much molested by the censorship, had its courageous and skilful writers such as VM Doroshevich, the master of that semi-literary and semi-journalistic essay at which Bronstein himself was one day to excel. Isaac Deutscher
82
When something needs to be said, I'll say it even if the whole world grabs me by the neck and tells me to keep quiet. Elif Shafak
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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. Claude Adrien Helvetius
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No member of a society has a right to teach any doctrine contrary to what society holds to be true. Samuel Johnson
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There is no such thing as a moral or an immoral book. Books are well written or badly written. Oscar Wilde
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Knowledge cannot defile nor consequently the books if the will and conscience be not defiled. John Milton
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We can never be sure that the opinion we are endeavouring to stifle is a false opinion and if we were sure stifling it would be an evil still. John Stuart Mill
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No government ought to be without censors and where the press is free no one ever will. Thomas Jefferson
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Censorship like charity should begin at home but unlike charity it should end there. Clare Boothe Luce
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Obscenity is whatever gives a judge an erection. Anonymous American Lawyer
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You censure this with difficulty because you have allowed it to become customary. St. Jerome
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I am mortified to be told that in the United States of America the sale of a book can become a subject of inquiry and of criminal inquiry too. Thomas Jefferson
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If there had been a censorship of the press in Rome we should have had today neither Horace nor Juvenal nor the philosophical writings of Cicero. Voltaire
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Every burned book enlightens the world. Ralph Waldo Emerson
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An attack upon our ability to tell stories is not just censorship - it is a crime against our nature as human beings. Salman Rushdie
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The books that will never be read. And all due to the fear of censorship. As always, young readers will be the real losers. Judy Blume