Self-censorship Quotes
Self-censorship as a result of intimidation or social pressures, sometimes referred to as "political correctness”, constitutes a serious obstacle to the proper functioning of democracy. It is important to hear the views of all persons, including the "silent majority”, and to give heed to the weaker voices.
Alfred de Zayas
From the Leftist point of view isolated ghettoes mainly populated by isolated immigrant groups are an ideal solution. Complete dependency on the political left makes the immigrant population loyal supporters of the left. Because the ghettoes are isolated, they only disturb the image of well-being in Sweden to an extent that can be covered up with effective media self-censorship and "education”. At the same time the dependence of the political Left on the ghettoes not only prevents it from taking any effective measures to stop the ghettoization (you cannot criticize your voters) but also makes stopping the ghettoization undesirable.
Jussi Halla-aho
I saw that publishing all over the world was deeply constrained by self-censorship, economics and political censorship, while the military-industrial complex was growing at a tremendous rate, and the amount of information that it was collecting about all of us vastly exceeded the public imagination.
Julian Assange
State censorship was an obvious assault on our creativity, but few Chinese writers actually acknowledge the serious and endemic issue of self-censorship. For me it was as clear as the operation of the state's apparatus – without self-censorship an artist in China would get nowhere and had no voice.
Xiaolu Guo
Francis Bacon, in his New Atlantis, could charge his elite scientists in Salomon's House with practicing self-censorship to avoid publicizing dangerous knowledge. Here is how the Father of Salomon's House describes their practice: "We have consultations, which of the inventions and experiences which we have discovered shall be published, and which not: and take all a oath of secrecy for the concealing of those which we think fit to keep secret: though some of those we do reveal sometime to the State, and some not.” Bacon, the first prophet of the new relation between science and society and of the "conquest of nature for the relief of man's estate,” knew better than we that knowledge is dangerous, that publication is a public and politically relevant act, and that self-censorship on the part of scientists is necessary and desirable. The passage is also remarkable for its wonderful ambiguity regarding whether scientists or the State has ultimate authority over dangerous knowledge.
Leon Kass
(Hirsi Ali has just given a page of examples of Islamic terrorism) Fear has an effect.
Thus slowly, and sometimes not so slowly, people begin to get used to not saying certain things, or they say them but certainly won't write them. The thin fingers of self-censorship begin to tighten around individual minds, then groups of people, then around ideas themselves and their expression. When free speech crumbles in this way, when Westerners refrain from criticizing or questioning certain practices, certain aspects of Islam, they abandon those Muslims who seek to question them too. They also abandon their own values. Once they have done that, their society is lost.
Ayaan Hirsi Ali
Subtle forms of political correctness, self-censorship, and romanticizing home racial/ethnic/class communities imprison us in limiting spaces. These categories do not reflect the realities we live in, and are not true to our multicultural roots. Liminality, the in-between space of nepantla, is the space most of us occupy. We do not inhabit un mundo but and we need to allow these other worlds and peoples to join in the feminist-of-color dialogue. We must be wary of assimilation but not fear cultural mestizaje. Instead we must become nepantleras and build bridges between all these worlds as we traffic back and forth between them, detribalizing and retribalizing in different and various communities.
Gloria E. Anzaldúa
There was a time in South Africa that people would put flaming tires around people's necks if they dissented. And in some ways the fear is that you will be ‘necklaced' here, you will have a flaming tire of lack of patriotism put around your neck. Now it is that fear that keeps journalists from asking the toughest of the tough questions...I do not except myself from this criticism...What we are talking about here-whether one wants to recognize it or not, or call it by its proper name or not-is a form of self-censorship. I worry that patriotism run amok will trample the very values that the country seeks to defend.
Dan Rather
