Quotes About Censorship

You can't talk about fucking in America, people say you're dirty. But if you talk about killing somebody, that's cool.

When Mark Twain was told in 1905 by the librarian of the Brooklyn Public Library that copies of The Adventures of Tom Sawyer and The Adventures of Huckleberry Finn had been removed from the shelves of the children's room, he replied, "I wrote Tom Sawyer and Huck Finn for adults exclusively, and it always distresses me when I find that boys and girls have been allowed access to them. The mind that becomes soiled in youth can never again be washed clean.

you know that a boy who likes boys is a dead boy, unless he keeps his mouth shut, which is what you didn't do

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

If the word ''fuck'' is ''obscene'' or ''dirty'', why isn't the word ''duck'' 75% ''dirty''?

As Paul Watzlawick notes, that which is objectively repressed (unspeakable) soon becomes subjectively repressed (unthinkable). Nobody likes to feel like a coward and a liar constantly. It is easier to cease to notice where the official tunnel-reality differs from existential fact. Thus SNAFU accelerates and rigiditus bureaucraticus sets in — the last stage before all brain activity ceases and the pyramid is clinically dead as an intellectual entity.

Rejection of science and free discussion are, of course, characteristic of all totalitarian movements; thus, nonbiblical astronomy was heretical to the Inquisition, unpalatable anthropology was Jewish to the Nazis, unsatisfactory biology was banned as bourgeois in Stalin's Russia and irritating ethology is sexist (and unpleasant psychology is chauvinist) to these ladies.

Milton said once, poetically, that whoever murders a book, murders a man. Psychologists would mostly agree that that is symbolically true. Destroying a book, like the psychotic behavior of slashing a photograph, expresses rage at the person who wrote the book or the person in the photo. One cannot help wondering, at this point, about those who burned the books of Dr. Reich or conspired to suppress the books of Dr. Velikovsky.

Researchers don't do certain kinds of research because they don't want to get thrown into San Quentin, as happened to Dr. Leary.

Just tape my ass shut and let me fart out my mouth.

the Nazis burned books in public. Liberals suppress opinions that differ from their own through influences they want kept secret. The right wing destroyed books. The left destroys authors. —William Wilde Curringer, Unfinished Memoirs

Religious liberty might be supposed to mean that everybody is free to discuss religion. In practice it means that hardly anybody is allowed to mention it.

I'm very depressed how in this country you can be told "That's offensive" as though those two words constitute an argument.

I have to respect my life, and free expression is part of my life. I can never really silence myself.

I appreciate that the New York Daily News will show dead bodies but blur the cover of a French parody magazine. Just out of respect, right guys?

But if I am not a criminal, I beg to be permitted to go abroad with my wife temporarily, for at least one year, with the right to return as soon as it becomes possible in our country to serve great ideas in literature without cringing before little men, as soon as there is at least a partial change in the prevailing view concerning the role of the literary artist. ("Letter To Stalin")

In the past, censorship worked by blocking the flow of information. In the twenty-first century, censorship works by flooding people with irrelevant information. [...] In ancient times having power meant having access to data. Today having power means knowing what to ignore.

In the past, censorship worked by blocking the flow of information. In the 21st century, censorship works by flooding people with irrelevant information. People just don't know what to pay attention to, and they often spend their time investigating and debating side issues.

In the twenty-first century censorship works by flooding people with irrelevant information.

In the past, censorship worked by blocking the flow of information. In the twenty first century, censorship works by blocking the flow of information.

In the twenty-first century censorship works by flooding people with irrelevant information. We just don't know what to pay attention to, and often spend our time investigating and debating side issues. In ancient times having power meant having access to data. Today having power means knowing what to ignore.

Praeityje keli? informacijos t?kmei užkirsdavo cenz?ra. XXI a. cenz?ruojama užtvindant žmones neaktualia informacija.

Una característica de los regímenes iliberales es que dificultan más la libertad de expresión incluso fuera de sus fronteras.

In the past, censorship worked by blocking the flow of information. In the twenty-first century, censorship works by flooding people with irrelevant information.