Quotes About Censorship

How delighted would be all the kings, czars and führers of the past (and commissars of the present) to know that censorship is not a necessity when all political discourse takes the form of a jest.

What Orwell feared were those who would ban books. What Huxley feared was that there would be no reason to ban a book, for there would be no one who wanted to read one.

An Orwellian world is much easier to recognize, and to oppose, than a Huxleyan.

Los tiranos siempre han confiado, y lo hacen aún, en la censura. Después de todo éste es el tributo que los tiranos pagan por suponer que el público conoce la diferencia entre el discurso serio y el entretenimiento, y que le importa.

Censorship, after all, is the tribute tyrants pay to the assumption that a public knows the difference between serious discourse and entertainment—and cares. How delighted would be all the kings, czars and führers of the past (and commissars of the present) to know that censorship is not a necessity when all political discourse takes the form of a jest.

Malcolm Browne managed to take a photograph of Arnett [AP's Peter Arnett] standing behind Halberstam for protection a moment later, just before another plainclothesman sneaked up behind Browne and smashed his camera with a rock. The rock did not damage the film inside. The Surete men backed off. They apparently had orders not use clubs, and they decided Halberstam was too much for them hand to hand. The uniformed police did not intervene

After the Saudi plutocrat Khalid bin Mahfouz used English law to attack books that American houses had not even published in England, President Obama signed a law that stated that the US courts should not enforce the orders of English judges against American authors.

Identity politics contains a trap. Of all the reasons to be wary of religious leaders asking the state to suspend freedom of speech to spare their tender feelings, not the smallest is that selective censorship leaves liberals with no argument against sectarians from the dominant denomination or ethnic group.

The worst aspect of the fear the ayatollahs spread was that Western intellectuals were afraid of admitting that they were afraid. If they had been honest, they would have forced society to confront the fact of censorship. As it was, their silence made the enemies of liberalism stronger.

The faster you strip down the respectful arguments for religious censorship, the more you see the nation, tribe or community splintering, until you are left with one group of individuals with coercive power behind them demanding the right to censor another group of individuals because they disagree with them.

they illustrated an unacknowledged truth about contemporary writing: reporters, editors and artists in Britain, America and most of Europe are not afraid of politicians. They are frightened of Islamists, and do not run cartoons that might offend them. They are frightened of oligarchs and CEOs, and worry about libel and the ability of the wealthy to bend the ear of their proprietors. But they are not frightened about leaking the secrets or criticising the actions of elected governments.

Other US networks that banned images of Muhammad said they were censoring because they were liberals who wanted to display their respect and tolerance. 'No you're not,' Stone said. 'You're afraid of getting blown up. That's what you're afraid of. Comedy Central copped to that, you know: "We're afraid of getting blown up.

The editor of a Danish newspaper wonders why comedians, who boast of their willingness to 'transgress boundaries' and 'speak truth to power', will mock Jesus but not Muhammad. He invites Danish cartoonists to satirise the Prophet. Most respond by satirising the editor. It makes no difference. They still have to spend the rest of their lives under police protection.

Rushdie Affair became the Dreyfus Affair of our age because it revealed how, when faced the threat of violence, ordinary political categories collapse.

Compared to the millions killed in wars and genocides in the years that followed the fatwa, the pain the enemies of the novel inflicted was small. But it was sufficient. The threats against Rushdie produced a fear that suffused Western culture and paralysed its best instincts.

Today's supporters of religious censorship claim that they are different. They say they are not advocating censorship because they believe we must bow down before Church and state, but because we must respect different cultures and say nothing that might offend them.

When all the exceptions have been made, however, Islamic states and paramilitaries are in a league of their own when it comes to religious censorship.

here is the second large point, to go through The Satanic Verses with the squinting eye of a censor searching for thought crimes, or even to seek to see it in the round, as I have tried to do, is to blind yourself to the real reason why the fatwa against Salman Rushdie became the Dreyfus Affair of our age.

The next countries to ban The Satanic Verses were Sudan, Bangladesh and apartheid South Africa. If you find the alliance of militant Islamists and white supremacists strange, then you have yet to learn that all the enemies of liberalism are the same.

As in America and Europe, British bookshops withdrew the novel in the face of threats – two independent bookshops on the Charing Cross Road were bombed, as were Penguin bookshops and a department store.

How do people, like, not curse? How is it possible? There are these gaps in speech where you just have to put a "fuck." I'll tell you who the most admirable people in the world are: newscasters. If that was me, I'd be like, "And the motherfuckers flew the fucking plane right into the Twin Towers." How could you not, if you're a human being? Maybe they're not so admirable. Maybe they're robot zombies.

So the "great man" named Rudolph Giuliani made ladies' titties illegal.

One reason why false and offensive speech is permitted in most liberal democracies is precisely because the best answer to bad speech is good speech, rather than censorship.

Censorship is never over for those who have experienced it. It is a brand on the imagination that affects the individual who has suffered it, forever.