Censorship Quotes - Page 4

• Our liberty depends on the freedom of the press, and that cannot be limited without being lost.

  Thomas Jefferson

  Freedom, Media, Liberty

  Thomas Jefferson, Jerry Holmes (2002). “Thomas Jefferson: A Chronology of His Thoughts”, p.71, Rowman & Littlefield

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• We live in oppressive times. We have, as a nation, become our own thought police; but instead of calling the process by which we limit our expression of dissent and wonder ‘censorship,’ we call it ‘concern for commercial viability.

  David Mamet

  Freedom, Media, Expression

  David Mamet (1986). “Writing in restaurants”, Viking Adult

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• The only thing that is obscene is censorship.

  Craig Reucassel

  Obscene

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• The sooner we all learn to make a decision between disapproval and censorship, the better off society will be... Censorship cannot get at the real evil, and it is an evil in itself.

  Granville Hicks

  Real, Evil, Decision

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• Fear of corrupting the mind of the younger generation is the loftiest form of cowardice.

  Holbrook Jackson

  Mind, Censorship In Books, Generations

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• Are we to have a censor whose imprimatur shall say what books may be sold, and what we may buy? And who is thus to dogmatize religious opinions for our citizens? Whose foot is to be the measure to which ours are all to be cut or stretched? Is a priest to be our inquisitor, or shall a layman, simple as ourselves, set up his reason as the rule of what we are to read, and what we must believe?

  Thomas Jefferson

  Religious, Book, Believe

  Thomas Jefferson (1855). “The Writings of Thomas Jefferson”, p.340

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• There is more than one way to burn a book. And the world is full of people running about with lit matches. Every minority, be it Baptist/Unitarian, Irish/Italian/Octogenarian/Zen Buddhist, Zionist/Seventh-day Adventist, Women's Lib/Republican, Mattachine/FourSquareGospel feels it has the will, the right, the duty to douse the kerosene, light the fuse. Every dimwit editor who sees himself as the source of all dreary blanc-mange plain porridge unleavened literature, licks his guillotine and eyes the neck of any author who dares to speak above a whisper or write above a nursery rhyme.

  Ray Bradbury

  Running, Buddhist, Book

  Ray Bradbury (2012). “Fahrenheit 451: A Novel”, p.209, Simon and Schuster

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• Knowledge cannot defile, nor consequently the books, if the will and conscience be not defiled.

  John Milton

  Book, Ifs, Conscience

  John Milton, James Augustus St. John (1871). “The Prose Works of John Milton ...: With a Preface, Preliminary Remarks, and Notes”, p.65

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• There are worse crimes than burning books. One of them is not reading them.

  Joseph Brodsky

  Education, Reading, Book

  "The Balancing Act: Mastering the Competing Demands of Leadership". Book by Kerry Patterson, Joseph Grenny, Al Switzler and Ron McMillan, 1996.

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• He is always the severest censor of the merit of others who has the least worth of his own.

  Elias Lyman Magoon

  Merit

  Elias Lyman Magoon (1849). “Proverbs for the people: or, Illustrations of practical godliness drawn from the Book of wisdom”, p.32

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• God forbid that any book should be banned. The practice is as indefensible as infanticide.

  Rebecca West

  Funny, Sarcastic, Women

  The Strange Necessity (1928) "The Tosh Horse"

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• I am still against any kind of censorship. It's a subject in my life that has been very important.

  Bernardo Bertolucci

  Important, Kind, Stills

  "Biography / Personal Quotes". www.imdb.com.

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• 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.

  Kathy Acker

  Way, Bandwagon, Minors

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• The censorship is such on television in the U.S. that films like mine don't stand a chance.

  John Pilger

  Television, Chance, Film

  Interview with David Barsamian, progressive.org. July 16, 2007.

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• 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

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• It is called the First Amendment. ...Simple words marching in seried ranks. Compact, concise. To the point. Clear and pure. It's freedom's music.

  Jack Valenti

  Simple, Firsts, First Amendment

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• It didn't come from the Government down. There was no dictum, no declaration, no censorship, to start with, no! Technology, mass exploitation, and minority pressure carried the trick, thank God.

  Ray Bradbury

  Technology, Government, Thank God

  Ray Bradbury (2016). “Fahrenheit 451”, p.28, Hamilton Books

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• How anybody expects a man to stay in business with every two-bit wowser in the country claiming a veto over what we can say and can't say and what we can show and what we can't show - it's enough to make you throw up. The whole principle is wrong; it's like demanding that grown men live on skim milk because the baby can't eat steak.

  Robert A. Heinlein

  Country, Baby, Men

  "The Man Who Sold the Moon" by Robert A. Heinlein, (p. 188), 1950.

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• 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.

  Tom Petty

  Believe, Responsibility, Artist

  "10 Things That Piss Off Tom Petty". Interview with David Wild, www.rollingstone.com. November 14, 2002.

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• As we see censorship it is a stupid giant traffic policeman answering "Yes" to "Am I my brother's copper?" He guards a one-way street and his semaphore has four signs, all marked "stop.

  Franklin P. Adams

  Brother, Stupid, Giants

  Franklin P. Adams (''F.P.A.'') (1944). “Nods and Becks”

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• The worst evil is - and that's the product of censorship - is the self-censorship, because that twists spines, that destroys my character because I have to think something else and say something else, I have to always control myself.

  Milos Forman

  Character, Thinking, Self

  The George Washington University Interview, nsarchive2.gwu.edu. January 18, 1997.

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• 

  He who destroys a good book kills reason itself.

  John Milton

  Book, Reading, Library

  Areopagitica (1644)

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• When a library expels a book of mine and leaves an unexpurgated Bible lying around where unprotected youth and age can get hold of it, the deep unconscious irony of it delights me and doesn't anger me.

  Mark Twain

  Lying, Book, Age

  Mark Twain (2012). “Mark Twain at Your Fingertips: A Book of Quotations”, p.234, Courier Corporation

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• Wherever they burn books they will also, in the end, burn human beings.

  Heinrich Heine

  Reading, Book, Evil

  Almansor: A Tragedy l. 245 (1823)

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• We Negro writers, just by being black, have been on the blacklist all our lives. Censorship for us begins at the color line.

  Langston Hughes

  Color, Racism, Poetry

  Langston Hughes (2002). “Essays on art, race, politics, and world affairs”

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