Censorship Quotes - Page 21

• 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.

  Shirley Temple

  Garbage Cans, World, Modern

  "Funny Ladies: The Best Humor from America's Funniest Women". Book by Bill Adler, February 23, 2001.

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• Any country that has sexual censorship will eventually have political censorship.

  Kenneth Tynan

  Country, Political

  "Critic Kenneth Tynan Has Mellowed But Is Still England's Stingingest Gadfly" by Godfrey Smith, archive.nytimes.com. January 9, 1966.

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• Scholars, who pride themselves on speaking their minds, often engage in a form of self-censorship which is called "realism." To be "realistic" in dealing with a problem is to work only among the alternatives which the most powerful in society put forth. It is as if we are all confined to a, b, c, or d in the multiple choice test, when we know there is another possible answer. American society, although it has more freedom of expression than most societies in the world, thus sets limits beyond which respectable people are not supposed to think or speak.

  Howard Zinn

  Powerful, Pride, Thinking

  Howard Zinn (2011). “The Zinn Reader: Writings on Disobedience and Democracy”, p.289, Seven Stories Press

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• If you care for the quality of life in our American democracy, then you have to be for censorship.

  Irving Kristol

  Democracy, Quality, Care

  Irving Kristol (1983). “Reflections of a neoconservative: looking back, looking ahead”, Basic Books (AZ)

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• Nothing threatens freedom of the personality and the meaning of life like war, poverty, terror. But there are also indirect and only slightly more remote dangers. One of these is the stupefaction of man (the "gray mass," to use the cynical term of bourgeois prognosticators) by mass culture with its intentional or commercially motivated lowering of intellectual level and content, with its stress on entertainment or utilitarianism, and with its carefully protective censorship.

  Andrei Sakharov

  Stress, War, Men

  "Progress, Coexistence and Intellectual Freedom" by Andrei Sakharov, ("The Threat to Intellectual Freedom"), www.sakharov-center.ru. 1968.

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• Money, first and foremost, is a medium of communication, conveying the information we call 'price'. Government control of the money supply is censorship, a violation of the First Amendment. Inflation is a lie.

  L. Neil Smith

  Lying, Communication, Government

  "Tactical Reflections" by L. Neil Smith, www.lneilsmith.org.

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• Art made tongue-tied by authority.

  William Shakespeare

  Art, Censorship In Books, Censoring Books

  Sonnet 66

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• Woe to that nation whose literature is disturbed by the intervention of power. Because that is not just a violation against "freedom of print," it is the closing down of the heart of the nation, a slashing to pieces of its memory.

  Aleksandr Solzhenitsyn

  Memories, Freedom, Heart

  Alexandr Solzhenitsyn's Nobel lecture in literature delivered only to the Swedish Academy, www.nobelprize.org. 1970.

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• What censorship accomplishes, creating an unreal and hypocritical mythology, fomenting an attraction for forbidden fruit, inhibiting the creative minds among us and fostering an illicit trade. Above all, it curtails the right of the individual, be he creator or consumer, to satisfy his intellect and his interest without harm. In our law-rooted society, we are not the keeper of our brother's morals - only of his rights.

  Judith Crist

  Brother, Creating, Rights

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• Students throughout the totalitarian world risk life and limb for freedom of expression, many American college students are demanding that big brother restrict their freedom of speech on campus. This demand for enhanced censorship is not emanating only from the usual corner - the know-nothing fundamentalist right - it is coming from the radical, and increasingly not-so-radical left as well.

  Alan Dershowitz

  Brother, College, Government

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• If some books are deemed most baneful and their sale forbid, how then with deadlier facts, not dreams of doting men? Those whom books will hurt will not be proof against events. Events, not books should be forbid.

  Herman Melville

  Dream, Hurt, Fear

  1854 'The Encantadas, Sketch Eighth', in Putnam's Monthly Magazine, May.

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• Censorship defeats the right to self determination.

  Billy Forbes

  Determination, Self, Defeat

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• If there is a bedrock principle underlying the First Amendment, it is that the government may not prohibit the expression of an idea simply because society finds the idea itself offensive or disagreeable.

  William J. Brennan

  Government, Expression, Ideas

  "Texas v. Johnson, 491 U.S. 397". 1989.

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• The Library is an open sanctuary. It is devoted to individual intellectual inquiry and contemplation. Its function is to provide free access to ideas and information. It is a haven of privacy, a source of both cultural and intellectual sustenance for the individual reader. Since it is thus committed to free and open inquiry on a personal basis, the Library must remain open, with access to it always guaranteed.

  Robert G. Vosper

  Ideas, Intellectual, Library

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• A sodomite got very excited looking at a zoology text. Does this make it pornography?

  Stanislaw Jerzy Lec

  Doe, Excited, Pornography

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• I never heard of anyone who was really literate or who ever really loved books who wanted to suppress any of them. Censors only read a book with great difficulty, moving their lips as they puzzle out each syllable, when someone tells them that the book is unfit to read.

  Robertson Davies

  Love, Moving, Book

  Robertson Davies (1949). “The Table Talk of Samuel Marchbanks”, Clarke, Irwin

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• It may be said that artist and censor differ in this wise: that the first is a decent mind in an indecent body and that the second is an indecent mind in a decent body.

  George Jean Nathan

  Wise, Artist, Mind

  George Jean Nathan (1925). “The American Mercury”

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• Yes, books are dangerous. They should be dangerous - they contain ideas.

  Pete Hautman

  Book, Ideas, Should

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• Banning books gives us silence when we need speech. It closes our ears when we need to listen. It makes us blind when we need sight.

  Stephen Chbosky

  Book, Sight, Giving

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• Inasmuch as it is manifest from experience that if the Holy Bible, translated into the vulgar tongue, be indiscriminately allowed to every one, the rashness of men will cause more evil than good to arise from it . . .

  Pope Pius IV

  Men, Evil, Tongue

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• Debate on public issues should be uninhibited, robust and wide-open and that...may well include vehement, caustic, and sometimes unpleasantly sharp attacks on government and public officials.

  William J. Brennan

  Issues, Government, Freedom Of Speech

  New York Times Co. v. Sullivan (1964)

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• ...there ought to exist the fullest liberty of professing and discussing, as a matter of ethical conviction, any doctrine, however immoral it may be considered.

  John Stuart Mill

  Liberty, Doctrine, May

  John Stuart Mill (2008). “Utilitarianism and On Liberty: Including 'Essay on Bentham' and Selections from the Writings of Jeremy Bentham and John Austin”, p.99, John Wiley & Sons

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• The only way to ensure that you and those you agree with have the right to speak is to support the right to speak of those you despise or do not like - the people with whom you do not agree.

  Pamela Wallin

  People, Support, Way

  Speech at the Senate on Erosion of Freedom of Speech, sencanada.ca. March 30, 2010.

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• I have the same confidence in the ability of our people to reject noxious literature as I have in their capacity to sort out the true from the false in theology, economics, or any other field.

  William O. Douglas

  People, Literature, Fields

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• Silence is the deadliest weapon of mass destruction.

  Cynthia McKinney

  Mass Destruction, Silence, Weapons

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