Censored Quotes - Page 3

• Every burned book or house enlightens the world; every suppressed or expunged word reverberates through the earth from side to side.

  Ralph Waldo Emerson

  Book, House, Atheism

  Ralph Waldo Emerson (1983). “Essays and Lectures”, p.299, Library of America

  18 Copy quote

  Show source

• Shut the door, they're coming through the window, shut the window, they're coming through the door," are the words to an old song. They fit my lifestyle with newly arriving butcher/censors every month. Only six weeks ago, I discovered that, over the years, some cubby-hole editors at Ballantine Books, fearful of contaminating the young, had, bit by bit, censored some 75 separate sections from the novel. Students, reading the novel which, after all, deals with censorship and book-burning in the future, write to tell me of this exquisite irony.

  Ray Bradbury

  Song, Book, Reading

  Ray Bradbury (2012). “Fahrenheit 451: A Novel”, p.210, Simon and Schuster

  4 Copy quote

  Show source

• If this nation is to be wise as well as strong, if we are to achieve our destiny, then we need more new ideas for more wise men reading more good books in more public libraries. These libraries should be open to all — except the censor. We must know all the facts and hear all the alternatives and listen to all the criticisms. Let us welcome controversial books and controversial authors. For the Bill of Rights is the guardian of our security as well as our liberty.

  John F. Kennedy

  Wise, Strong, Reading

  Saturday Review, p. 44, October 29, 1960.

  16 Copy quote

  Show source

• If the fires of freedom and civil liberties burn low in other lands they must be made brighter in our own. If in other lands the press and books and literature of all kinds are censored we must redouble our efforts here to keep them free. If in other lands the eternal truths of the past are threatened by intolerance we must provide a safe place for their perpetuation.

  Franklin D. Roosevelt

  Freedom, Book, Past

  Roosevelt, Franklin D. (1941). “Public Papers of the Presidents of the United States: F.D. Roosevelt, 1938, Volume 7”, p.418, Best Books on

  7 Copy quote

  Show source

• Satire that the censor understands is rightly censored.

  Karl Kraus

  Satire

  4 Copy quote

• Whatever is unnamed, undepicted in images, whatever is omitted from biography, censored in collections of letters, whatever is misnamed as something else, made difficult-to-come-by, whatever is buried in the memory by the collapse of meaning under an inadequate or lying language - this will become, not merely unspoken, but unspeakable.

  Adrienne Rich

  Memories, Lying, Letters

  9 Copy quote

• I never really expected "Hurricane" to be censored and banned around the world, but I think the good thing that came from it was that it created a dialogue, a conversation, a debate and a discussion. And that's a great thing. It brought all of us together in a unique way. And it made us look a little deeper in ourselves. I think it's a good thing.

  Jared Leto

  Thinking, Unique, Together

  4 Copy quote

• For an entire populace, change, growth, and spontaneity were dangerous. Acting upon a personal desire, whispering a hidden longing, revealing your true feelings - all the human actions we think of as essential to a character - had be censored by the self lest they be punished by the state.

  Adam Johnson

  Character, Thinking, Self

  4 Copy quote

• If this nation is to be wise as well as strong, if we are to achieve our destiny, then we need more new ideas for more wise men reading more good books in more public libraries.

  John F. Kennedy

  Wise, Strong, Book

  Saturday Review, p. 44, October 29, 1960.

  7 Copy quote

  Show source

• Are you a censor? Do you tell people not to say “girl”? Shame on you! If nothing offends you, you’re a saint or you’re psychotic. If a few things offend you, deal with them--fairly. If you’re often offended by things, you’re probably a self-righteous asshole and it’s too bad you weren’t censored yourself--by your mother in an abortion clinic.

  William T. Vollmann

  Girl, Mother, Self

  12 Copy quote

• Are public school textbooks biased? Are they censored? The answer to both is yes. And the nature of the bias is clear: Religion, traditional family values, and conservative political and economic positions have been reliably excluded from children's textbooks.

  Paul Vitz

  Christian, Religious, Children

  6 Copy quote

• Television is a very highly constructed, and edited, and censored, and tailored, and marketed reality. But I'm not judgemental about it. I don't have anything against television. I just personally don't feel curious.

  Jodhi May

  Reality, Judgemental, Television

  4 Copy quote

• At the U.N., any nation that fights back is censored as an "aggressor."

  Sam Levenson

  Fighting, Government, Nations

  4 Copy quote

• The internet is necessarily public. It can be filtered-public or censored-public, but it necessarily has to be open and available.

  John Green

  Internet, Available

  "Crash Course in Community Building and Content Creation". Interview with Heike Young, www.marketingcloud.com. October 6, 2014.

  4 Copy quote

  Show source

• In America, about the only thing censored today is Christianity, the same Christianity that was the driving force behind the building of this great nation.

  Rick Scarborough

  Christian, Religious, America

  Rick Scarborough (2008). “Enough is Enough”, p.64, Frontline

  4 Copy quote

  Show source

• All speech should be presumed to be protected by the Constitution, and a heavy burden should be placed on those who would censor to demonstrate with relative certainty that the speech at issue, if not censored, would lead to irremediable and immediate serious harm.

  Alan Dershowitz

  Issues, Freedom Of Speech, Serious

  Alan Dershowitz (2008). “Finding, Framing, and Hanging Jefferson: A Lost Letter, a Remarkable Discovery, and Freedom of Speech in an Age of Terrorism”, p.30, John Wiley & Sons

  15 Copy quote

  Show source

• A dead language is not only one no longer spoken or written, it is unyielding language content to admire its own paralysis. Like statist language, censored and censoring. Ruthless in its policing duties, it has no desire or purpose other than maintaining the free range of its own narcotic narcissism, its own exclusivity and dominance. However moribund, it is not without effect for it actively thwarts the intellect, stalls conscience, suppresses human potential. Unreceptive to interrogation, it cannot form or tolerate new ideas, shape other thoughts, tell another story, fill baffling silences.

  Toni Morrison

  Ideas, Silence, Desire

  Nobel Prize for Literature Lecture, delivered 7 December 1993

  6 Copy quote

  Show source

• In France now, there's no problem with official censorship. Once your movie is finished, you always are R-rated. My movie is just R-rated in France. But when you meet French producers with a script like mine, they behave like the most fragile chickens in the world. They just tell you "Oh, no. You should cut this. You should cut that." And at the end you have been totally censored on the synopsis, and then on the script.

  Gaspar Noe

  Cutting, World, Scripts

  Source: www.freepatentsonline.com

  4 Copy quote

  Show source

• Part of the power of the Internet is that information flows out there and it's generally not censored and it's generally not controlled by any single authority.

  Barack Obama

  Information Flow, Internet, Authority

  Source: www.realclearpolitics.com

  4 Copy quote

  Show source

• The nation in arms is virtually a communist state: the people must be paid wages and fed and protected and regimented behind the lines as much as on the front. Minds must be kept loyal and at the right pitch of hate, so that successive drafts of fighters are accepted without murmurings. Letters and newspapers must be censored while the propaganda mill grinds on. As for decisions of strategy and overall command, they must please many masters: dissenters in the cabinet, the heads of the allied states and public opinion. Hence failures must be disguised or concealed.

  Jacques Barzun

  Hate, Tyrants, People

  4 Copy quote

• To reject the word is to reject the human search.

  Max Lerner

  Censorship In Books, Censoring Books, Purging

  Max Lerner (1959). “The Unfinished Country”

  8 Copy quote

  Show source

• The thing about stand-up was, I was doing all this sketch and YouTube stuff where I was not being censored and I got to do my own thing, and it was really cool.

  Donald Glover

  Stuff, Really Cool, Youtube

  Interview with Genevieve Koski, tv.avclub.com. March 19, 2010.

  7 Copy quote

  Show source

• As it is an ancient truth that freedom cannot be legislated into existence, so it is no less obvious that freedom cannot be censored into existence.

  Dwight D. Eisenhower

  Truth, Honesty, Freedom

  Eisenhower, Dwight D. (1960). “Public Papers of the Presidents of the United States: Dwight D. Eisenhower, 1953”, p.456, Best Books on

  4 Copy quote

  Show source

• I've been quoting the book [on Peter Sutcliffe] constantly in rehearsals. Some members of the cast have stated their disapproval that it should even have been written. Some of the women have expressed more - disgust and anger. What are they saying? They'd prefer not to know, not to understand? They'd prefer certain areas of life to be censored? Isn't that partly what breeds the Sutcliffes and the Nilsens?

  Antony Sher

  Book, Rehearsal, Members

  4 Copy quote

• I did not agree..to having my article censored. ...The published report of the conference gives my name as a participant, but you will not find in it the paper I read. ...Scientists as a group are no more, and no less, influenced by emotional and irrational reactions than other people are.

  John Yudkin

  Dark, Emotional, Names

  7 Copy quote