Mark Twain Quotes About Censorship

• Adam was but human—this explains it all. He did not want the apple for the apple's sake, he wanted it only because it was forbidden. The mistake was in not forbidding the serpent; then he would have eaten the serpent.

  Mark Twain

  Mistake, Apples, Want

  Pudd'nhead Wilson ch. 2, "Pudd'nhead Wilson's Calendar" (1894)

• 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

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

  Mark Twain

  Funny, Witty, Baby

• We write frankly and freely, but then we modify before we print.

  Mark Twain

  Writing, Censorship, Print

  Mark Twain (1994). “Mark Twain on the damned human race”

• I wrote 'Tom Sawyer' and 'Huck Finn' for adults exclusively, and it always distressed me when I find that boys and girls have been allowed access to them. The mind that becomes soiled in youth can never again be washed clean.

  Mark Twain

  Girl, Boys, Mind

• There's nobody for me to attack in this matter even with soft and gentle ridicule-and I shouldn't ever think of using a grown up weapon in this kind of a nursery. Above all, I couldn't venture to attack the clergymen whom you mention, for I have their habits and live in the same glass house which they are occupying. I am always reading immoral books on the sly, and then selfishly trying to prevent other people from having the same wicked good time.

  Mark Twain

  Book, Reading, Thinking

You May Also Like:

Charles Dickens

Ernest Hemingway

Oscar Wilde

Edgar Allan Poe

Jack London

Hal Holbrook

William Faulkner