Censorship Quotes

1. "Dissident state or company employees in the Congo could not easily write to Morel directly, for a cabinet noir, or censorship office, in Boma monitored their correspondence."
Author: Adam Hochschild

2. "Censorship is saying: 'I'm the one who says the last sentence. Whatever you say, the conclusion is mine.' But the internet is like a tree that is growing. The people will always have the last word - even if someone has a very weak, quiet voice. Such power will collapse because of a whisper."
Author: Ai Weiwei

3. "There should be no censorship of mail."
Author: Barbara Deming

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

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

6. "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."
Author: China Miéville

7. "On the television planet, where men make up the tribe, the law of the caveman rules. So, for a woman coming from another world, without experience or cunning, to succeed gradually in gaining control over what is to be taped, what goes out over the air, what is said without censorship, is an epic feat."
Author: Cristina Saralegui

8. "Cable had a latitude to move which created less censorship and bestowed upon the artists, the writers and the creators, more liberty to create their shows."
Author: Daniel Gillies

9. "We live in oppressive times. We have, as a nation, become our own thought police; but instead of calling the process by which we limit our expression of dissent and wonder ‘censorship,' we call it ‘concern for commercial viability."
Author: David Mamet

10. "Censorship feeds the dirty mind more than the four-letter word itself."
Author: Dick Cavett

11. "I am seriously opposed to censorship of any sort."
Author: Don Johnson

12. "Censorship of anything, at any time, in any place, on whatever pretense, has always been and always will be the last resort of the boob and the bigot."
Author: Eugene O'Neill

13. "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."
Author: Eugenio Montale

14. "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)]"
Author: George Bernard Shaw

15. "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."
Author: George Bernard Shaw

16. "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."
Author: Granville Hicks

17. "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 ..."
Author: Hakim Bey

18. "By placing discretion in the hands of an official to grant or deny a license, such a statute creates a threat of censorship that by its very existence chills free speech."
Author: Harry A. Blackmun

19. "Censorship always defeats it own purpose, for it creates in the end the kind of society that is incapable of exercising real discretion."
Author: Henry Steele Commager

20. "...I didn't feel that I was an American at all, with all that suburban ideal and sex repression and general dreary newspaper grey censorship of all our real human values..."
Author: Jack Kerouac

21. "As Pa said, censorship encouraged people to believe nonsense."
Author: John Christopher

22. "The Internet treats censorship as a malfunction and routes around it."
Author: John Perry Barlow

23. "The library has a robust collection of what I call non-cuddly hate lit. This is one of my favorite things about working here: If you believe censorship is poison, here lies paradise."
Author: Josh Hanagarne

24. "In this age of censorship, I mourn the loss of books that will never be written, I mourn the voices that will be silenced-writers' voices, teachers' voices, students' voices-and all because of fear."
Author: Judy Blume

25. "The books that will never be read. And all due to the fear of censorship. As always, young readers will be the real losers."
Author: Judy Blume

26. "Stopping leaks is a new form of censorship."
Author: Julian Assange

27. "I think the best thing in cases of censorship or things like this is to get as much media as possible."
Author: Kathy Acker

28. "We get on the bandwagon in all sorts of ways - you know minor ways and major ways - like what you've just encountered which isn't censorship exactly, it was something sort of uglier in a way."
Author: Kathy Acker

29. "Censoring books that deal with difficult, adolescent issues does not protect anybody. Quite the opposite. It leaves kids in the darkness and makes them vulnerable. Censorship is the child of fear and the father of ignorance. Our children cannot afford to have the truth of the world withheld from them"
Author: Laurie Halse Anderson

30. "These censorship people think something is going to promote behavior in people."
Author: Max Cannon

31. "Still, a person who cannot express love is stopping the flow of life, is censoring where censorship is a form of self-indulgence, the fear of giving oneself away."
Author: May Sarton

32. "Censorship is a strange situation. There was times when people would burn books because they didn't like what people were doing."
Author: Michael Berryman

33. "Let me be clear: I am not an advocate of censorship."
Author: Mike Rogers

34. "To struggle against censorship, whatever its nature, and whatever the power under which it exists, is my duty as a writer, as are calls for freedom of the press. I am a passionate supporter of that freedom, and I consider that if any writer were to imagine that he could prove he didn't need that freedom, then he would be like a fish affirming in public that it didn't need water."
Author: Mikhail Bulgakov

35. "I agree that it's a shame some books have to suffer ratings that clearly are invalid. However I can't think of a way to prevent it, and I didn't see any ideas in the thread either (I did skim though). I hope you'll appreciate that if we just start deleting ratings whenever we feel like it, that we've gone down a censorship road that doesn't take us to a good place."
Author: Otis Y. Chandler

36. "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."
Author: Ray Bradbury

37. "We're all watching each other, so there's no chance for censorship. The main problem is the idiot TV. If you watch local news, your head will turn to mush."
Author: Ray Bradbury

38. "On things like censorship, I think everything should be allowed on television. You know, I mean anything. I don't know who believes that anymore. Every left wing party says there should be some degree of censorship, that some things are bad taste. But it's unjustifiable for anyone to decide what is bad taste."
Author: Richey Edwards

39. "The whole principle (censorship) is wrong; it's like demanding that grown men live on skim milk because the baby can't eat steak."
Author: Robert A. Heinlein

40. "You seldom get a censorship attempt from a 14-year-old boy. It's the adults who get upset."
Author: Robert Cormier

41. "But, uh, censorship at that time said that you just absolutely couldn't do anything involving children and so we had to go from there. I don't remember what I changed it to. Duvall is just excellent in it."
Author: Robert Towne

42. "I believe in any kid's ability to read any book and form their own judgments. It's the job of a parent to guide his/her child through the reading of every book imaginable. Censorship of any form punishes curiosity."
Author: Sherman Alexie

43. "When silence is a choice, it is an unnerving presence. When silence is imposed, it is censorship."
Author: Terry Tempest Williams

44. "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."
Author: Tim Robbins

45. "The only valid censorship of ideas is the right of people not to listen."
Author: Tommy Smothers

46. "One thing that success has taught me is censorship."
Author: Tracey Emin

47. "They still had the Lord Chamberlain, so we had this idiotic censorship. We were allowed three Jesus Christs instead of 10. Why three were OK, I don't know."
Author: Uta Hagen

48. "Chief Factors Limiting Access to Facts:1)Artificial censorship2)Limitations of social contact3)Comparatively meager time in a day for paying attention to public affairs.4)Distortion arising because events have to be compressed into very short messages5)Difficulty of making a small vocabulary express a complicated world6)Fear of facing those facts which would seem to threaten the established routine of men's lives"
Author: Walter Lippmann

49. "Quite frankly, I think political correctness is the worst form of censorship. You're not allowed to speak your mind unless you're black, or unless you're a terrorist, or unless you're an Arab or a minority people. Then you can say what you like. But if you are like a lot of us you are not supposed to say certain things."
Author: Wilbur Smith

50. "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."
Author: Yang Lan

Censorship Quotes Pictures