Quotes & Sayings About Censorship

Censorship feeds the dirty mind more than the four-letter word itself. — Dick Cavett

Censorship of ideas or images or words is wrong. — Richard King

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

But poets were not considered dangerous and they were advised to exercise self-censorship. At most, poets were requested not to write at all. I took advantage of this negative liberty. — Eugenio Montale

I'm not interested in censorship. I like the First Amendment very much. — Henry Rollins

The worst, most insidious effect of censorship is that, in the end, it can deaden the imagination of the people. Where there is no debate, it is hard to go on remembering, every day, that there is a suppressed side to every argument. — Salman Rushdie

Although erotica authors are being targeted, this is an issue that should concern all indie authors. It affects indies disproportionately because indies are the ones pushing the boundaries of fiction. Indies are the ones out there publishing without the (fading) protective patina of a "traditional publisher" to lend them legitimacy. We indies only have each other. — Mark Coker

I have a very specific definition of censorship. Censorship must be done by the government or it's not censorship. — Penn Jillette

In the ideal public library, we are all readers of the "middling sort." Reading whatever we will, we fulfill a public function, preserving the sacrosanct space of inner thought that is our birthright. Assaults on that birthright in the forms of legislation, surveillance, and censorship ultimately are precisely as dangerous as our acquiescence in them. — Matthew Battles

When you're on your own, you have all the self-censorship that everybody has when they try and write. All the little voices that say, 'No, you can't write that, what will they think of that?' — Nick Cave

When you tear out a man's tongue, you are not proving him a liar, you're only telling the world that you fear what he might say. — George R R Martin

Well, part of the thing is, like, what's the difference between censorship and social responsibility? I sometimes find that the whole censorship argument is used as a way for people to avoid the fact that they're like ... — Kathleen Hanna

Wikipedia has experienced censorship at the hands of industry groups and governments, and we are - increasingly, I think - seeing important decisions made by unaccountable, non-transparent corporate players, a shift from the open web to mobile walled gardens, and a shift from the production-based Internet to one that's consumption-based. — Sue Gardner

If [domain seizure] isn't direct censorship, I don't know what is. — Dan Gillmor

Although censorship from others is not acceptable, you practice it every day when you decide with what people you will share what information, otherwise our deepest feelings would be shared with all the wrong people. — D.S. Mixell

Freedom is always, and exclusively, freedom for the one who thinks differently. — Rosa Luxemburg

Censorship should never be allowed. One should be able to say anything. But I refuse to let politics be foisted on me. — Orhan Pamuk

Students throughout the totalitarian world risk life and limb for freedom of expression, many American college students are demanding that big brother restrict their freedom of speech on campus. This demand for enhanced censorship is not emanating only from the usual corner - the know-nothing fundamentalist right - it is coming from the radical, and increasingly not-so-radical left as well. — Alan Dershowitz

Those golden minutes before you are completely awake, when your mind is just drifting, you have no censorship; you are ready to develop any kind of idea. That's when I come up with the best and worst ideas. That is the privilege of being a writer - that you can stay in bed for an hour in the morning and it's work time. — Jo Nesbo

Scholars, who pride themselves on speaking their minds, often engage in a form of self-censorship which is called "realism." To be "realistic" in dealing with a problem is to work only among the alternatives which the most powerful in society put forth. It is as if we are all confined to a, b, c, or d in the multiple choice test, when we know there is another possible answer. American society, although it has more freedom of expression than most societies in the world, thus sets limits beyond which respectable people are not supposed to think or speak. — Howard Zinn

i am awake only in what i love & desire to the point of terror -- everything else is just shrouded furniture, quotidian anaesthesia, shit-for-brains, sub-reptilian ennui of totalitarian regimes, banal censorship & useless pain ... — Hakim Bey

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

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

The committees scour the bookstores, printing and publishing houses, paying particular attention to secondhand bookstores. There, they requisition countless copies of 'Incautious Maidens' or 'Flames at the Metropole.' So that those who prefer the false view of the world presented in cheap novels will never find refuge again. — Mariusz Szczygiel

We are not afraid to entrust the American people with unpleasant facts, foreign ideas, alien philosophies, and competitive values. For a nation that is afraid to let its people judge the truth and falsehood in an open market is a nation that is afraid of its people.
[Remarks on the 20th Anniversary of the Voice of America; Department of Health, Education, and Welfare, February 26, 1962] — John F. Kennedy

What is also strange to me is that public libraries have always been in the forefront of opposing censorship. — Matthew Lesko

The people are fed up with corruption and embezzlement. They object to censorship. The first thing that the people of Iran want is free elections. — Shirin Ebadi

The sooner we all learn to make a decision between disapproval and censorship, the better off society will be ... Censorship cannot get at the real evil, and it is an evil in itself. — Granville Hicks

The Central Propaganda Department is the highest-ranking censorship agency in China. And it has control over everything from the appointment of newspaper editors to university professors to the way that films are cut and distributed. — Evan Osnos

Simplicity itself. Skin, debone, demarrow, scarify, melt, render down and destroy. Every adjective that counted, every verb that moved, every metaphor that weighed more than a mosquito
out! Every simile that would have made sub-moron's mouth twitch
gone! Any aside that explained the two-bit philosophy of a first-rate writer
lost!
Every story slenderized, starved, bluepenciled, leeched and bled white, resembled every other story. Twain read like Poe read Shakespeare read like Dostoevsky read like
in the finale
Edgar Guest. Every word of more than three syllables had been razored. Every image that demanded so much as one instant's attention
shot dead. — Ray Bradbury

When you publish a book, you do so in part to end the silence. All censorship is silence. I would never, as an author, feel right requiring a young person whose family would object to the book to read it. Just as I would never force that person to read it, I would ask those folks to not force others not to read it. To me, that is just good manners. — Stephen Chbosky

Indeed, an astoundingly small proportion of arguments 'for free speech' and 'against censorship' or 'banning' are, in fact, about free speech, censorship or banning. It is depressing to have to point out, yet again, that there is a distinction between having the legal right to say something & having the moral right not to be held accountable for what you say. Being asked to apologise for saying something unconscionable is not the same as being stripped of the legal right to say it. It's really not very f-cking complicated. Cry "free speech" in such contexts, you are demanding the right to speak any bilge you wish without apology or fear of comeback. You are demanding not legal rights but an end to debate about and criticism of what you say. When did bigotry get so needy? This assertive & idiotic failure to understand that juridical permissibility backed up by the state is not the horizon of politics or morality is absurdly resilient. — China Mieville

I fear yet this iron yoke of outward conformity hath left a slavish print upon our necks: the ghost of a linnen decency yet haunts us. — John Milton

I resent the fact that a parental warning sticker has to be included on an album as cover art. To me that's censorship. — Jeff Buckley

The censor pretends he is protecting tender hearts, shielding children from sex and violence, keeping the righteous in the right path, guarding against temptation, preserving virtue. How? by burning books, tearing out tongues, stretching necks, stoning women; through torture and imprisonment; by threats of violence against the victim's friends and family; by force-feeding his own people a philosophy not only false and wicked now but false and wicked the day it was first announced by some imaginary lord and used to purchase or preserve his privileges and hoodwink the world. — William H Gass

Censorship is the thing that stops you doing what you want to do, and what writers want to talk about is what they do, not what stops them doing it. — Salman Rushdie

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

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

The struggle for a free intelligence has always been a struggle between the ironic and the literal mind. — Christopher Hitchens

You should not be subjected to the pressures, the intimidation, whether by Government or by the private sector, which would force you into self-censorship. — Alfred-Maurice De Zayas

When silence is a choice, it is an unnerving presence. When silence is imposed, it is censorship. — Terry Tempest Williams

There was something so unutterably ridiculous about the sight of a US company deleting posts accusing it of censorship that many other people began to protest. — G.R. Reader

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] — Stephen Fry

in the month-by-month process of editorial criticism and censorship, Hardy never lost his fierce contempt for all forms of 'tampering with natural truth — Thomas Hardy

History proves there is no better advertisement for a book than to condemn it for obscenity. — Holbrook Jackson

I wrote a song about dental floss but did anyone's teeth get cleaner? — Frank Zappa

I'm a product of a military dictatorship. Under a dictatorship, you cannot trust information or dispense it freely because of censorship. So Brazilians become very flexible in the use of metaphors. They learn to communicate with double meanings. — Vik Muniz

As Pa said, censorship encouraged people to believe nonsense. — John Christopher

We do not need a censorship of the press. We have a censorship by the press. — G.K. Chesterton

Those who call for censorship in the name of the oppressed ought to recognize it is never the oppressed who determine the bounds of censorship. — Aryeh Neier

Perhaps I identify too well with my father's illicit awe. A trace of this seems caught in the photo, just as a trace of Roy has been caught on the light-sensitive paper ... It's a curiously ineffectual attempt at censorship. Why cross out the year and not the month? Why, for that matter, leave the photo in the envelope at all?
In an act of prestidigitation typical of the way my father juggled his public appearance and private reality, the evidence is simultaneously hidden and revealed. — Alison Bechdel

The notion of political correctness has ignited controversy across the land. And although the movement arises from the laudable desire to sweep away the debris of racism and sexism and hatred it replaces old prejudices with new one. It declares certain topics off-limits, certain expressions off-limits, even certain gestures off-limits. What began as a crusade for civility has soured into a cause of conflict and even censorship. — George H. W. Bush

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

Chinese artists have been subversive over thousands of years, taking what they think of the government and embedding it in their art. There might be censorship of not going as far as they might. — Amy Tan

Censorship exists to block criticism and protect corruption. — Suzy Kassem

In China, the rules of the market are not always that transparent. So it's very hard. Also, the national TV networks are all owned by the government, so our shows are subject to censorship by the networks. Every now and then, we are told that certain subjects cannot be talked about. There are frustrations. — Yang Lan

China's censorship and propaganda systems may be complex and multilayered, but they are obviously not well coordinated. — Rebecca MacKinnon

Censorship, I believe, is the most dangerous enemy to all human communication, and piety of intention is probably the most dangerous, the most virulent and the most self-satisfying. — Chuck Jones

I am still against any kind of censorship. It's a subject in my life that has been very important. — Bernardo Bertolucci

There is no such thing as a dirty word. Nor is there a word so powerful, that it's going to send the listener to the lake of fire upon hearing it. — Frank Zappa

Censorship is the child of fear and the father of ignorance. — Laurie Halse Anderson

We are in an era where censorship is creeping back in through the Patriot Act and where people are.. being intimidated not to speak about what we should be speaking about,. — Gerald Nicosia

In this scheme, the 'unconscious' and the 'preconscious' are agencies or authorities (Instanzen) which the wish has to satisfy; the unconscious is more tolerant, and helps the wish to smuggle itself past the censorship of the preconscious. As a result, psychical energy is discharged without disturbing sleep. — Sigmund Freud

Imprisoning philosophy within the professionalizations and specializations of an institutionalized curriculum, after the manner of our contemporary European and North American culture, is arguably a good deal more effective in neutralizing its effects than either religious censorship or political terror — Alasdair MacIntyre

And wasn't it this bright boy you selected for beating and tortures after hours? Of course it was. We must all be alike. Not everyone born free and equal, as the Constitution says, but everyone made equal. Each man the image of every other; then all are happy, for their are no mountains to make them cower, to judge themselves against. So! A book is a loaded gun in the house next door. Burn it. Take the shot from the weapon. Breach man's mind. Who knows who might be the target of the well-read man? Me? I won't stomach them for a minute. And so when houses were finally fireproofed completely, all over the world (you were correct in your assumption the other night) there was no longer need of firemen for the old purposes. They were given the new job, as custodians of our peace of mind, the focus of our understandable and rightful dread of being inferior: official censors, judges and executors. That's you, Montag, and that's me. — Ray Bradbury

There is no such thing as unlawful censorship in the home. Movies, magazines, television, videos, the Internet, and other media are there as guests and should only be welcomed when they are appropriate for family enjoyment. — M. Russell Ballard

Like it or not, Google and the Chinese government are stuck in a tense, long-term relationship, and can look forward to more high-stakes shadow-boxing in the netherworld of the world's most elaborate system of censorship. — Rebecca MacKinnon

As the voices fall silent, the individuals who make up the amorphous and always changing community must decide for themselves, as they always have. I can't write a coda because I can't speak for others. I can only and ever speak for myself. — G.R. Reader

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

People must not think that all bad in man which is unleashed, the moment you impose censorship disappears from man. — Milos Forman

Now, tell me how you're going to teach the history of Jefferson, and cut out all those quotes and cut out all these facts, and cut out the key line of the Declaration of Independence: We are endowed by our Creator. I mean you have to have a conscious deliberate censorship of America, which is what the left and the courts and the classrooms has had for 40 years. — Newt Gingrich

Right now I think censorship is necessary; the things they're doing and saying in films right now just shouldn't be allowed. There's no dignity anymore and I think that's very important. — Mae West

A censor is an expert in cutting remarks. A censor is a man who knows more than he thinks you ought to. — Laurence J. Peter

That's right,' said Morin smoothly. 'We had better just let Marfa Timofeyevna finish keeping us on the straight and narrow.' Somehow his tone as he said this managed to suggest both that censorship was silly, and that it was silly to mind it. Galich conceded Morin a small internal round of (Applause), his headache whispering in his temples. He was highly accomplished himself at finding pleasure-giving, urbane descriptions of what couldn't be helped, but Morin, moreover, had hit the precise note of the moment, liberally-minded yet unchallenging, ironic yet inoffensive. The — Francis Spufford

There seems to be an assumption that if you're offended by movie brutality, you are somehow playing into the hands of the people who want censorship. But this would deny those of us who don't believe in censorship the use of the only counter-balance: the freedom of the press to say that there's anything conceivably damaging in these films - the freedom to analyze their implications ... How can people go on talking about the dazzling brilliance of movies and not notice that the directors are sucking up to the thugs in the audience? — Pauline Kael

I loathe it when they [English teachers] are bullied by no-nothing parents or cowardly school boards. — Pat Conroy

Redeeming social value, indeed. — Simon Sheppard

The ultimate censorship is the flick of the dial. — Tommy Smothers

You know, sometimes just giving yourself permission to feel any emotion without judgment or censorship can lessen the intensity of those negative emotions. — Augusten Burroughs

Some books can only be written when winners turn into loosers — Bangambiki Habyarimana

My father never put a book into my hands and never forbade a book. Instead, he let me roam and graze, making my own more or less appropriate selections. I read gory tales of historic heroism that nine-teenth century parents were suitable for children, and gothic ghost stories that were surely not; I read accounts of arduous travel through treacherous lands undertaken by spinsters in crinolines, and I read handbooks on decorum and etiquette intended for young ladies of good family; I read books with pictures and books without; books in English, books in French, books in languages I didn't understand where I could make up stories in my head on the basis of a handful of guessed-at words. Books. Books. And books. — Diane Setterfield

England has been praised for turning out intelligent, adult pictures whereas Hollywood has been severely censured for turning out junk. I don't think criticism is a valid one because, in defense of Hollywood, we have censorship problems England doesn't have. I'm not speaking of the license to do sexy stuff. I'm speaking of the license to present adult ideas and viewpoints, which we lack and which means in turn that many of our pictures lack intelligent content. — John Garfield

Access to the outside world is preventing more censorship. I do think information flow is happening in China.. There's no doubt in my mind that it's been a huge plus. — Bill Gates

Perhaps MacKinnon should reflect on these suggestions that the censorship issue is not so simple-minded, so transparently gender-against-gender, as she insists. She should stop calling names long enough to ask whether personal sensationalism, hyperbole, and bad arguments are really what the cause of sexual equality now needs. — Ronald Dworkin

Growing up in a religious environment, children learn what not to do sexually. They learn that some practices or ideas, such as homosexuality, lust, masturbation, and pornography are sinful. These ideas are embedded in the minds of children years before they are ready for marriage, so it's no surprise that many religious people have little or no experience with sex and know little about their sexuality.
The guilt cycle that results from this training creates a form of self-censorship. Because so many sex acts and ideas are liable to lead to eternal damnation, people have a strong incentive to avoid expressing or discussing secretly held ideas and interests. Fear leads to hidden thoughts and activities and prevents normal, appropriately channeled sexual expression. — Darrel Ray

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

Whose foot is to be the measure to which ours are all to be cut or stretched? — Thomas Jefferson

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

There were adventure stories supplied with cloths for mopping your brow, thrillers containing pressed leaves of soothing valerian to be sniffed when the suspense became too great, and books with stout locks sealed by the Atlantean censorship authorities ("Sale permitted, reading prohibited!"). One shop sold nothing but 'half' works that broke off in the middle because their author had died while writing them; another specialised in novels whose protagonists were insects. I also saw a Wolperting shop that sold nothing but books on chess and another patronised exclusively by dwarfs with blond beards, all of whom wore eye-shades. — Walter Moers

I'm very much interested in music specifically and wanted to make a film about it, but not in an atmosphere of censorship. — Bahman Ghobadi

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

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

No," said Dina. "We don't burn books."
"Who's we?"
"People with an ounce of brain. — G. Willow Wilson

Censorship & Torture.
Netherlands, Nuenen
August 17, 2016
P.C.M. Hermans — Petra Hermans

There should be no censorship of mail. — Barbara Deming

Don't join the book burners! — Dwight D. Eisenhower

I saw that publishing all over the world was deeply constrained by self-censorship, economics and political censorship, while the military-industrial complex was growing at a tremendous rate, and the amount of information that it was collecting about all of us vastly exceeded the public imagination. — Julian Assange

Failure to use tax money to finance things not liked by the taxpaying public is routinely called 'censorship.' If such terminology were used consistently, virtually all of life would be just one long, unending censorship, as individuals choose whether to buy apples instead of oranges, vacations rather than violins, furniture rather than mutual funds. But of course no such consistency is intended. This strained use of the word 'censorship' appears only selectively, to describe public choices and values at variance with the choices and values of the anointed. — Thomas Sowell

To vest a few fallible men - prosecutors, judges, jurors - with vast powers of literary or artistic censorship, to convert them into what J.S. Mill called the "moral police" is to make them despotic arbiters of literary products ... If one day they ban mediocre books as obscene, another day they may do otherwise to a work of a genius. Originality, not too plentiful, should be cherished, not stifled. An author's imagination may be cramped if he must write with an eye on prosecutors or juries ... — Jerome Frank

I'm convinced that no normal human being ever woke up one morning and said, "Dammit, my life doesn't have enough petty bureaucratic rules, zero-tolerance policies, censorship, and fear in it. How do I fix that?" Instead, they let this stuff pile up, one compromise at a time, building up huge sores suppurating with spore-loaded fluids that eventually burst free and beslime everything around them. It gets normal to them, one dribble at a time. — Bruce Sterling