Dangerous Censorship Quotes & Sayings

Censorship laws are blunt instruments, not sharp scalpels. Once enacted, they are easily misapplied to merely unpopular or only marginally dangerous speech. — Alan Dershowitz

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

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

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

It's not fair that the gorgeous get more gorgeous when they're pissed, while the ugly only get more hideous. — Amy Kathleen Ryan

A big change is coming, and politicians, self-important scientists, and unctuously blathering religious leaders may want to, but will never be able to, stop it. There is no vaccination against thinking. Ideas know no boundaries and no censorship. And what's more, ideas have a dangerous tendency to spread like wildfire. — Erich Von Daniken

So much of writing is fed by vanity and the feeling that what you are doing is the most important thing in the world and it has not been done before and only you can do it. Without these feelings, many writers would not be able to write anything at all. — Pankaj Mishra

I have a real issue with anyone trying to protect children from their own imaginations. If we cannot acknowledge that a lot of us have a bit of darkness within ourselves, some more than others perhaps, and bring it into the light and examine it and talk about this part of the human condition, then I think we will be living in quite a dangerous climate. I think that's much more damaging for children. — J.K. Rowling

Submitting to censorship is to enter the seductive world of 'The Giver': the world where there are no bad words and no bad deeds. But it is also the world where choice has been taken away and reality distorted. And that is the most dangerous world of all. — Lois Lowry

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

The framers of the constitution knew human nature as well as we do. They too had lived in dangerous days; they too knew the suffocating influence of orthodoxy and standardized thought. They weighed the compulsions for restrained speech and thought against the abuses of liberty. They chose liberty.
[Beauharnais v.Illinois, 342 U.S. 250, 287 (1952) (dissenting)] — William O. Douglas

Art is never chaste. It ought to be forbidden to ignorant innocents, never allowed into contact with those not sufficiently prepared. Yes, art is dangerous. Where it is chaste, it is not art. — Pablo Picasso

Yes, books are dangerous. They should be dangerous - they contain ideas. — Pete Hautman

Strangely, I heard a stranger say, I am with you. — Rainer Maria Rilke

I consider the official Catholic attitude on divorce, birth control, and censorship exceedingly dangerous to mankind. — Bertrand Russell

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

Nowadays love is a matter of chance, matrimony a matter of money and divorce a matter of course. — Helen Rowland

Music is definitely something that I'd like to pursue. It's probably, I mean, the acting and music are the two biggest things in my life. — Nolan Sotillo

Anything that controls my state of mind I never really want to do because I always want to be under control. That might be part of me being a Virgo. I never want to do something that stops me from being in control of who I am and my actions. — Keke Palmer

My father was everything to me. Unlike my mother - I didn't have a special affinity with her. — Giovanna Cau

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