Censorship Quotes

We are willing enough to praise freedom when she is safely tucked away in the past and cannot be a nuisance. In the present, amidst dangers whose outcome we cannot foresee, we get nervous about her, and admit censorship. (E. M. Forster)
Censorship reflects a society's lack of confidence in itself. It is a hallmark of an authoritarian regime. View quote
Potter Stewart
Censorship ends in logical completeness when nobody is allowed to read any books except the books that nobody reads. View quote
George Bernard Shaw
Right now I think censorship is necessary; the things they're doing and saying in films right now just shouldn't be allowed. There's no dignity anymore and I think that's very important. View quote
Mae West
I believe in censorship. After all, I made a fortune out of it. View quote
Mae West
I can imagine no greater disservice to the country than to establish a system of censorship that would deny to the people of a free republic like our own their indisputable right to criticise their own public officials. While exercising the great powers of the office I hold, I would regret in a crisis like the one through which we are now passing to lose the benefit of patriotic and intelligent criticism. View quote
Woodrow Wilson
Any country that has sexual censorship will eventually have political censorship. View quote
Kenneth Tynan
Let children read whatever they want and then talk about it with them. If parents and kids can talk together, we won't have as much censorship because we won't have as much fear. View quote
Judy Blume
Censorship, like charity, should begin at home; but, unlike charity, it should end there. View quote
Clare Boothe Luce
Censorship is telling a man he can't have a steak just because a baby can't chew it. View quote
Mark Twain
Censorship is advertising paid by the government. (Federico Fellini)
I suppose that writers should, in a way, feel flattered by the censorship laws. They show a primitive fear and dread at the fearful magic of print. View quote
John Mortimer
The Net interprets censorship as damage and routes around it. View quote
John Gilmore
What is also strange to me is that public libraries have always been in the forefront of opposing censorship. View quote
Matthew Lesko
Let me be clear: I am not an advocate of censorship. View quote
Mike Rogers
Once a paper admits any principle of censorship for survival, the we-don't-want-to-do-it-but-we-don't-want-to-lose-the-printer kind of censorship, it jeopardizes the integrity of its editorial principle. It's better to print and be damned, because you'll be damned anyway. View quote
Germaine Greer
Any test that turns on what is offensive to the community's standards is too loose, too capricious, too destructive of freedom of expression to be squared with the First Amendment. Under that test, juries can censor, suppress, and punish what they don't like, provided the matter relates to "sexual impurity" or has a tendency "to excite lustful thoughts". This is community censorship in one of its worst forms. It creates a regime where in the battle between the literati and the Philistines, the Philistines are certain to win. View quote
William O. Douglas
Sunnybrook Farm is now a parking lot; the petticoats are in the garbage can, where they belong in the modern world; and I detest censorship. View quote
Shirley Temple
Assassination is the extreme form of censorship. View quote
George Bernard Shaw
Assassination is the extreme form of censorship; and it seems hard to justify an incitement to it on anti-censorial principles. View quote
George Bernard Shaw
Secrecy, censorship, dishonesty, and blocking of communication threaten all the basic needs. (Abraham Maslow)
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. View quote
Kathy Acker
I don't believe in censorship, but I do believe that an artist has to take some moral responsibility for what he or she is putting out there. And I think a lot of these young kids are going to have to learn the hard way before they realize that you can actually do some damage if you're being careless or frivolous in what you're saying. View quote
Tom Petty
Perhaps MacKinnon should reflect on these suggestions that the censorship issue is not so simple-minded, so transparently gender-against-gender, as she insists. She should stop calling names long enough to ask whether personal sensationalism, hyperbole, and bad arguments are really what the cause of sexual equality now needs. View quote
Ronald Dworkin
I often say that censorship is always a cause for celebration. It is always an opportunity because it reveals fear of reform. It means that the power position is so weak that you have got to care what people think. View quote
Julian Assange