Quotes About Censorship

the repressiveness of a society in general is directly proportionate to its harsh repression of sexual language." What

Everyone is in favor of free speech. Hardly a day passes without its being extolled, but some people's idea of it is that they are free to say what they like, but if anyone else says anything back, that is an outrage.

You see these dictators on their pedestals, surrounded by the bayonets of their soldiers and the truncheons of their police ... yet in their hearts there is unspoken fear. They are afraid of words and thoughts: words spoken abroad, thoughts stirring at home -- all the more powerful because forbidden -- terrify them. A little mouse of thought appears in the room, and even the mightiest potentates are thrown into panic.

Books and all forms of writing have always been objects of terror to those who seek to suppress truth.

coprolalia.

bowdlerized, censored, suppressed and maybe even burned by the public hangman. But people who believe in this diabolical power of words and/or ideas and/or images

I am Envy...I cannot read and therefore wish all books burned.

Sometimes I thought Truth had vanished from the earth," he cried bitterly. "Like everything else, it was rationed by the governments. I taught myself to disbelieve half of what I read in the papers.

an incomplete listing of anything reveals that a selection has been made, and any act of selection is of course political.

Censorship, like charity, should begin at home; but unlike charity, it should end there.

The Germans have a word for it: Todgeschweigen. Killed by not being mentioned.

If a novelist were so uncouth and possessed of so little moral sense that he should write of illicit love, his book would be barred from the public libraries and he woukd be ostracized by society.

Als er overal wordt gelogen, als je eigen ervaring zo tegengesteld is aan de officiële waarheid en op die manier van je wordt afgepakt, moet je wel verstommen.

Censorship is serious and drastic business; it should never set merely upon guesswork and more particularly not upon the guesses of men so staunch in morals that they are obviously of distant kin to the rest of humanity.

There are more English books printed in Antwerp than in London, but those who print without a licence are branded, sometimes an eye is gouged out or a hand cut off. And informers are everywhere. Even, no doubt, amongst our own merchants.

Both the American people and nations that censor the internet should understand that our government is committed to helping promote internet freedom.

As I speak to you today, government censors somewhere are working furiously to erase my words from the records of history. But history itself has already condemned these tactics.

He had seen the banning of books, music and films, the closure of theaters and cinemas, the outlawing of football, and all the other countless ways in which the Libyan dictatorship, like a crazed jealous lover, infiltrated every aspect of public and private life.

Who destroys books? Cities, churches, dictators and fanatics. Their fingers itch to build a pyre and strike the match. On 10 May 1933, students gathered in Berlin to dance around a bonfire of 25,000 volumes of 'un-German' books. They burned, amongst many others, Bertolt Brecht, Otto Dix, Heinrich Heine, Ernest Hemingway, James Joyce and H.G. Wells. They destroyed them because the contents were too dangerous.

Everyone that watches "Deep Throat" is watching me being raped.

When politicians and civil servants hear the word culture they feel for their blue pencils.

If we all say the same thing, then I think the government has to listen. But because no one is saying it, I become singled out, even though what I'm saying is common sense. It's very essential values that we all have to protect. But in Chinese society, people are giving up on protecting these values.

My friend, the Dutch filmmaker Theo van Gogh, was murdered in 2004 for having been insufficiently reverent toward Islam.

When a 'Life of Brian' comes out with Muhammad in the lead role, directed by an Arab equivalent of Theo van Gogh, it will be a huge step forward.