Censorship Quotes
159 quotes
"There are worse crimes than burning books. One of them is not reading them."
"For books are not absolutely dead things, but do contain a potency of life in them to be as active as that soul was whose progeny they are; nay, they do preserve as in a vial the purest efficacy and extraction of that living intellect that bred them."
"When truth is replaced by silence,the silence is a lie."
"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."
"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?"
"Don't join the book burners. Don't think you're going to conceal faults by concealing evidence that they ever existed. Don't be afraid to go in your library and read every book..."
"If all printers were determined not to print anything till they were sure it would offend nobody, there would be very little printed."
"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."[I saw hate in a graveyard -- Stephen Fry, The Guardian, 5 June 2005]"
"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!"
"Children deprived of words become school dropouts; dropouts deprived of hope behave delinquently. Amateur censors blame delinquency on reading immoral books and magazines, when in fact, the inability to read anything is the basic trouble."
"What cannot be said above all must not be silenced but written."
"Libraries should be open to all - except the censor.[Response to questionnaire in Saturday Review, October 29 1960]"
"Books can not be killed by fire. People die, but books never die. No man and no force can abolish memory... In this war, we know, books are weapons. And it is a part of your dedication always to make them weapons for man's freedom."
"Censorship ends in logical completeness when nobody is allowed to read any books except the books that nobody can read."[As quoted in Literary Censorship in England (in Current Opinion, Vol. 55, No. 5, November 1913)]"
"A word to the unwise.Torch every book.Char every page.Burn every word to ash.Ideas are incombustible.And therein lies your real fear."
"Only the nonreader fears books."
"Censorship is the child of fear and the father of ignorance."
"All of us can think of a book... that we hope none of our children or any other children have taken off the shelf. But if I have the right to remove that book from the shelf - that work I abhor - then you also have exactly the same right and so does everyone else. And then we have no books left on the shelf for any of us."
"To prohibit the reading of certain books is to declare the inhabitants to be either fools or slaves."
"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."
"Did you ever hear anyone say, 'That work had better be banned because I might read it and it might be very damaging to me'?"
"A censor is an expert in cutting remarks. A censor is a man who knows more than he thinks you ought to."
"All the papers that matter live off their advertisements, and the advertisers exercise an indirect censorship over news."
"I also hold very strong personal convictions about censorship. I don't believe in forbidden knowledge."
"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."
"It hardly matters why a library is destroyed: every banning, curtailment, shredding, plunder or loot gives rise (at least as a ghostly presence) to a louder, clearer, more durable library of the banned, looted, plundered, shredded or curtailed."
"You can never talk religion on network TV. It makes too many people angry. You can talk about sex."
"A leader should always be open to criticism, not silencing dissent. Any leader who does not tolerate criticism from the public is afraid of their dirty hands to be revealed under heavy light. And such a leader is dangerous, because they only feel secure in the darkness. Only a leader who is free from corruption welcomes scrutiny; for scrutiny allows a good leader to be an even greater leader."
"Those who make conversations impossible, make escalation inevitable."
"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]"
"You may silence the critics, but you don't silence the pain."
"Censorship may promote the lies, but it does not alter the truth."
"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, Dark Alliance: The CIA, the Contras, and the Cocaine Explosion
"A system is corrupt when it is strictly profit-driven, not driven to serve the best interests of its people."
Suzy Kassem, Rise Up and Salute the Sun: The Writings of Suzy Kassem
"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, The Poetry of Rahman Baba: Poet of the Pakhtuns
"You can control the visibility of my name and my popularity, but you cannot control the frequency at which people are quoting me. Truth always rises with time."
Suzy Kassem, Rise Up and Salute the Sun: The Writings of Suzy Kassem
"Poems are difficult to silence."
"Freedom of the press is limited to those who own one."
"Be passionate about what you write, believe in your ability to convey timeless ideas, and let no one tell you what what you're capable of."
"Any given censor is a fool. The very fact that he is a censor indicates that."
"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."
"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."
"Truth is the preferred weapon of God, and censorship is the most abused tool of the Devil."
Suzy Kassem, Rise Up and Salute the Sun: The Writings of Suzy Kassem
"Pick a leader who will make their citizens proud. One who will stir the hearts of the people, so that the sons and daughters of a given nation strive to emulate their leader's greatness. Only then will a nation be truly great, when a leader inspires and produces citizens worthy of becoming future leaders, honorable decision makers and peacemakers. And in these times, a great leader must be extremely brave. Their leadership must be steered only by their conscience, not a bribe."
Suzy Kassem, Rise Up and Salute the Sun: The Writings of Suzy Kassem
"If this nation is to be wise as well as strong, if we are to achieve our destiny, then we need more new ideas for more wise men reading more good books in more public libraries. These libraries should be open to all—except the censor. We must know all the facts and hear all the alternatives and listen to all the criticisms. Let us welcome controversial books and controversial authors. For the Bill of Rights is the guardian of our security as well as our li"
"[Public] libraries should be open to all—except the c"
"Any book worth banning is a book worth reading."
"History proves there is no better advertisement for a book than to condemn it for obscenity."
"It's red hot, mate. I hate to think of this sort of book getting in the wrong hands. As soon as I've finished this, I shall recommend they ban it."
"I hate it that Americans are taught to fear some books and some ideas as though they were diseases."
Showing 50 of 159 quotes