Quotes About Censorship

Chinese central government doesn't need to even lead public opinion: it just selectively stops censorship. In other words, just as censorship is a political tool, so is the absence of censorship.

They [intellectuals] coined most of the slogans that guided the butcheries of Bolshevism, Fascism, and Nazism. Intellectuals extolling the delights of murder, writers advocating censorship, philosophers judging the merits of thinkers and authors, not according to the value of their contributions but according to their achievements on battlefields, are the spiritual leaders of our age of perpetual strife.

In societies like the American and West European where the dynamics of energy come from freedom and where the climate and the whole ethos are those of freedom, censorship is bound to be at worst, stupid; at best, futile; and always, to some degree, inconsonant with the character of the society as a whole.

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

By placing discretion in the hands of an official to grant or deny a license, such a statute creates a threat of censorship that by its very existence chills free speech.

Stopping leaks is a new form of censorship.

I have pretty strong views about censorship, and I don't like it. I believe that we should be able to monitor our own families and our own children.

I have a very serious censorship office inside my head; it censors things that I could tell you that you would never forget, and I don't want to be the person to stick that in your brain.

As a form of moral insurance, at least, literature is much more dependable than a system of beliefs or a philosophical doctrine. Since there are no laws that can protect us from ourselves, no criminal code is capable of preventing a true crime against literature; though we can condemn the material suppression of literature - the persecution of writers, acts of censorship, the burning of books - we are powerless when it comes to its worst violation: that of not reading the books. For that crime, a person pays with his whole life; if the offender is a nation, it pays with its history.

Joe Lieberman was threatening censorship. What I'm arguing is that if the creative people in Hollywood themselves have a responsibility, have a moral responsibility in terms of smoking, not to show smoking in movies.

I think the best thing in cases of censorship or things like this is to get as much media as possible.

Propaganda by censorship takes two forms: the selective control of information to favour a particular viewpoint, and the deliberate doctoring of information in order to create an impression different from that originally intended.

I worry about censorship in many parts of the world.

What is also strange to me is that public libraries have always been in the forefront of opposing censorship.

Our legal and political culture has created a bias in the law that borders on censorship against reading, displaying, or quoting the Bible.

I understand that people are afraid. Because I think censorship is about fear. It's just fear being projected onto art.

There's the belief that we can't be smart enough to write. And certainly censorship of women, too.

Censorship is saying: "I'm the one who says the last sentence. Whatever you say, the conclusion is mine." But the internet is like a tree that is growing. The people will always have the last word – even if someone has a very weak, quiet voice. Such power will collapse because of a whisper.

In any event, the proper question isn't what a journalist thinks is relevant but what his or her audience thinks is relevant. Denying people information they would find useful because you think they shouldn't find it useful is censorship, not journalism.

Censorship is telling a man he can't have a steak just because a baby can't chew it.

The first thing dictators do is finish free press, to establish censorship. There is no doubt that a free press is the first enemy of dictatorship.

I don't approve of censorship. I like the French theatre idea. Put on the play, and if the audience doesn't care for it, or feels offended by it, they rip up the seats.

[I]t's not just the books under fire now that worry me. It is the books that will never be written. The books that will never be read. And all due to the fear of censorship. As always, young readers will be the real losers.

It's such an honour being banned in Italy, the mother of sensuality. It's like being asked to straighten your tie in a bordello... It's ironic that the pictures were removed on the complaint of a cardinal. I regard censorship as a cardinal sin.

When you have strict censorship of the internet, young students cannot receive a full education. Their view of the world is imbalanced. There can be no true discussion of the issues.

And although I'm all for freedom of expression and against censorship, there are certain things I'm not willing to go to jail for.

Secrecy, censorship, dishonesty, and blocking of communication threaten all the basic needs.

Censorship is to art as lynching is to justice.

When you publish a book, you do so in part to end the silence. All censorship is silence. I would never, as an author, feel right requiring a young person whose family would object to the book to read it. Just as I would never force that person to read it, I would ask those folks to not force others not to read it. To me, that is just good manners.

I always had a struggle, which I still do, when you're playing a character and it's not necessarily your morals or your values. You're playing a character, but the way the media will sometimes ask you if these are your opinions, you know - they make you responsible for that, and I take issue with it because I don't believe in censorship.