Quotes About Censorship

There are those who so dislike the nude that they find something indecent in the naked truth.

Kids are naturally inventive and curious and creative, but most adults have had that beaten out of them. Writing is a form of play; you have to get rid of all those internal censors that we adults have, the things that say, 'Don't go there, that's not allowed.'

In the history of the world, no censor has ever been looked back on with respect.

Nothing optional -- from homosexuality to adultery -- is ever made punishable unless those who do the prohibiting (and exact the fierce punishment) have a repressed desire to participate.

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.

every time the secret police close in, our heroes are able to "disapparate"—a term that always makes me think of an attempt at English by George W. Bush.

Real horror of the porcine is manifest all over the Islamic world. One good instance would be the continued prohibition of George Orwell's Animal Farm, one of the most charming and useful fables of modern times, of the reading of which Muslim schoolchildren are deprived. I have perused some of the solemn prohibition orders written by Arab education ministries, which are so stupid that they fail to notice the evil and dictatorial role played by the pigs in the story itself.

Nothing optional - from homosexuality to adultery - is ever made punishable unless those who do the prohibiting (and exact the fierce punishments) have a repressed desire to participate.

When Dr. Samuel Johnson had completed the first real dictionary of the English language, he was visited by a delegation of respectable old ladies who wished to congratulate him for not including any indecent words. His response - which was that he was interested to see that the ladies had been looking them up - contains almost all that needs to be said on this point.

Nothing evokes the prurient like puritanism.

Assassination is the extreme form of censorship.' George Bernard Shaw

You think sex is dirty. You have a dirty mind.

The many vanished books on these forbidden subjects (among others) altogether constitute a shadow history of America—a history that We the People need to know at last, our country having now become a land with billionaires in charge, and millions not allowed to vote, and everybody under full surveillance.

Because you make lesbian fist-fucking videos," he said.

The point is that newspapers are not there for spreading news but for covering it up. X happens, you have to report it, but it causes embarrassment for too many people, so in the same edition you add some shock headlines - mother kills four children, savings at risk of going up in smoke, letter from Garibaldi insulting his lieutenant Nino Bixio discovered, etc. - so news drowns in a great sea of information.

El caso es que los periódicos no están hechos para difundir sino para encubrir noticias. Sucede el hecho X, no puedes obviarlo, pero, como pone en apuros a demasiada gente, en ese mismo número te marcas unos titulones que le ponen a uno los pelos de punta: madre degüella a sus cuatro hijos, quizá nuestros ahorros acaben en cenizas

The government were going to do everything possible to avoid offending a touchy Reichskanzler, even to the extent of censoring British opinion on the subject of "Munich." American newsreels which ventured criticism were barred, and a strict rule against censure of Chamberlain was being enforced by the British radio.

Free speech doesn't overthrow governments," answered the other. "It's the lack of free speech.

The value of universal literacy is of course questionable in a society that practices the strictest form of censorship.

No society in the present age is so self-critical, so ready to embrace foreign ideas, or so transparent and merit-based as the United States. Far more lethal to the U.S. military than a new form of IED would be censorship of ideas back home in the United States, or religious restrictions on research, or politically guided rules of investigation and publication, or government-run monopolies on labor, management, and production.

I want them to know that banning a book is like banning a hug and THAT is a dismal storm no child should be left behind in

I want them to know that banning a book is like banning a hug and THAT is a dismal storm no should be left behind in

What I actually want to call you is a hell of a lot more unprintable than your name

but you can't forbid a word, so there.