Quotes about Censorship
Censorship has been a hot topic for hundereds of years. This may or may not be a good thing, but it has certainly ensured one thing: there is no shortage of people wanting to talk about censorship! Here are a few of the best, selected by us at USABB, with the gracious help of Dante the Chicken.
"Did you ever hear anyone say 'That work had better be banned because I might read it and it might be very dangerous to me'?"
- Joseph Henry Jackson
"...this is precisely the purpose of censorship- not only to block unwanted views, but to keep people who are unhappy from knowing how many millions of others share their unhappiness; to keep the dormant opposition from awakening to its own developing strength."
- Hedrick Smith
"I am opposed to any form of tyranny over the mind of man."
-- Thomas Jefferson [What would he think of his country today...?]
"Censorship is advertising paid by the government."
-- Federico Fellini, Italian film director
"Freedom of the Press, if it means anything at all, means the freedom to criticize and oppose."
-- George Orwell
"Censorship reflects society's lack of confidence in itself. It is a hallmark of an authoritarian regime."
-- Supreme Court Justice Potter Stewart
"As long as I don't write about the government, religion, politics, and other institutions, I am free to print anything."
-- Pierre-Augustin Beaumarchais (French comedy writer)
"A censor is a man who knows more than he thinks you ought to."
-- Granville Hicks
"Fear of corrupting the mind of the younger generation is the loftiest of cowardice."
-- Holbrook Jackson
"Burning is no answer."
--Camille Desmoulines
reply to Robespierre, January 7, 1794,
on burning his newspaper
Vieux Cordelier "You have not converted a man because you have silenced him."
--John Morley
"Emancipate yourselves from mental slavery! None but ourselves can free our minds."
--Bob Marley,
Redemption Song [personal USABB fave]
"The ultimate form of censorship is assassination."
--George Bernard Shaw
"For whatever deserves to exist also deserves to be known, for knowledge is the image of existence; and things mean and splendid exist alike."
--Francis Bacon
"The press is easier to strangle than to look in the eyes."
--Sir Winston Churchill
"This is slavery, not to speak one's thought."
--Euripedes [Greek tragic poet]
"Censorship in any form is the enemy of creativity, since it cuts off the life blood of
creativity: ideas."
--Allan Jenkins
"They can't censor the gleam in my eye."
--Charles Laughton [British Actor]
