Censorship Censor Quotes & Sayings

Libraries should be open to all - except the censor.
[Response to questionnaire in Saturday Review, October 29 1960] — John F. Kennedy

Let children read whatever they want and then talk about it with them. If parents and kids can talk together, we won't have as much censorship because we won't have as much fear. — Judy Blume

A few have become acquainted with Orwell's 1984; because it is both difficult to obtain and dangerous to possess, it is known only to certain members of the Inner Party. Orwell fascinates them through his insight into details they know well, and through his use of Swiftian satire. Such a form of writing is forbidden by the New Faith because allegory, by nature manifold in meaning, would trespass beyond the prescriptions of socialist realism and the demands of the censor. Even those who know Orwell only by hearsay are amazed that a writer who never lived in Russia should have so keen a perception into its life. — Czeslaw Milosz

Look, I get it. Loose stools are grosser than solid ones. But the censor is using the context of her own life history with all her hang-ups to answer the question, Is there a defensible ratio of fiber to water in this stool? — Sarah Silverman

I think the enemy is self-censorship. In a free society the biggest danger is that you're afraid to the point where you censor yourself. — Tim Robbins

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

Satires which the censor can understand are justly forbidden — Karl Kraus

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

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

To be clear, Goodreads staff have not been deleting any posts. A value we've always had here is that we don't censor content (unless it's against our policies - eg porn, etc). [April 1, 2013] — Otis Y. Chandler

The censors were so far gone as to find the following sentence obscene: 'The factory gate waited for the student workers, thrown open in longing.' What can I say? This obscenity verdict was handed down by a censor in response to my script for my 1944 film about a girls' volunteer corps, Ichiban utsukushiku (The Most Beautiful). I could not fathom what it was he found to be obscene about this sentence. Probably none of you can either. But for the mentally disturbed censor this sentence was unquestionably obscene. He explained that the word 'gate' very vividly suggested to him the vagina! For these people suffering from sexual manias, anything and everything made them feel carnal desire. Because they were obscene themselves, everything seen through their obscene eyes naturally became obscene. Nothing more or less than a case of sexual pathology. — Akira Kurosawa

He is always the severest censor of the merit of others who has the least worth of his own. — Elias Lyman Magoon

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

Dark, was banned by the Irish state censor for obscenity. The story was set, as so much of McGahern's later fiction would be, in isolated rural Ireland and dealt with the bleak consequences of parental and clerical child abuse. On the instructions of the Archbishop of Dublin, McGahern was sacked from his job as a primary school teacher. He later left the country. Despite these apparent setbacks, McGahern's literary friends reassured him that all this was a wonderful opportunity in terms of publicity and sales. Remember Joyce and Beckett being forced overseas? This was Irish literary history repeating itself, and preparations were soon being made to mount a campaign against the anachronistic and widely derided censorship laws with McGahern as the figurehead.
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McGahern agreed that the situation was indeed absurd, and says that even as an adolescent reader he had nothing but contempt for the censorship board. — John McGahern

Any test that turns on what is offensive to the communitys standards is too loose, too capricious, too destructive of freedom of expression to be squared with the First Amendment. Under that test, juries can censor, suppress, and punish what they dont like, provided the matter relates to sexual impurity or has a tendency to excite lustful thoughts. This is community censorship in one of its worst forms. It creates a regime where in the battle between the literati and the Philistines, the Philistines are certain to win. — William O. Douglas

Words alone can rarely justify censorship. If we censor words themselves without looking at the context, we could shut down much of the entertainment industry. — Witold Walczak

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

I never make moral judgments; I'm not qualified to do so. I am not a censor, a priest, or a politician. — Federico Fellini

Self-censorship is a lie to yourself; if you are going to be trying to seriously create art, to create literary art, and you decide to hold back, to censor yourself, then you are a fool to yourself and it would be better that you kept your mouth shut and did not speak. — Salman Rushdie

And that's the most horrible thing about censorship: To avoid falling afoul of the censors, we question ourselves and censor ourselves and make a big deal out of things in our heads. We do the work of the control freaks for them, out of a desire to avoid them. — G.R. Reader

We fear storms and wild beasts, but we do not censor them. If we must guard ourselves from evil influences we thereby admit their seductive appeal. — Philip Slater

Censorship exists to protect corruption. — Suzy Kassem

The function of the censor is to censor. He has a professional interest in finding things to suppress. — Thomas I. Emerson

Censorship is not an occupation that attracts intelligent, subtle minds. Censors can and often have been outwitted. But the game of slipping Aesopian messages past the censor is ultimately a sterile one, diverting writers from their proper task. — J.M. Coetzee

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

There cannot be a censor, or a censorship that does not degenerate into absurdity and corruption, there never has been, and there never will be and of all the excuses for it that there could be, that it protects superstition, and religious fanaticism would be the worst. — Christopher Hitchens

You clap. The Censor wakes up. We all get into trouble. — Craig Ferguson

Any given censor is a fool. The very fact that he is a censor indicates that. — Heywood Broun

Are you a censor? Do you tell people not to say "girl"? Shame on you! If nothing offends you, you're a saint or you're psychotic. If a few things offend you, deal with them
fairly. If you're often offended by things, you're probably a self-righteous asshole and it's too bad you weren't censored yourself
by your mother in an abortion clinic. — William T. Vollmann

I think what we have in this country is a little more dangerous in a way because it can't be seen fully. It's sorta internal censorship. We censor each other. — Kathy Acker

Once you get used to censorship, sometimes you self-censor. — Lucien Bourjeily

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. The source of better ideas is wisdom. The surest path to wisdom is a liberal education. — Alfred Whitney Griswold

The important task of literature is to free man, not to censor him, and that is why Puritanism was the most destructive and evil force which ever oppressed people and their literature: it created hypocrisy, perversion, fears, sterility. — Anais Nin

Books can be burned," croaked Black.
"They have a way of rising from the ashes," said Andreus. — James Thurber

Censorship makes me really angry. I even hate it when people censor themselves. — Emma Stone

Colleges have a twofold duty when it comes to dealing with censorship. First, there is the duty to not censor the free expression of ideas, especially important and newsworthy ones. Second, colleges have the duty to protect speakers from being silenced by others. Century has failed miserably on both counts. — Greg Lukianoff

Censors never go after books unless kids already like them. I don't even think they know to go after books until they know that children are interested in reading this book, therefore there must be something in it that's wrong. — Judy Blume

Pontius Pilate was the first great censor and Jesus Christ the first great victim of censorship. — Ben Lindsey

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

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

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