Censorship Quotes - Page 12

• Whose foot is to be the measure to which ours are all to be cut or stretched?

  Thomas Jefferson

  Cutting, Feet, Internet

  Letter to N. G. Dufief, 19 Apr. 1814

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

  Alanis Morissette

  Art, Thinking, People

  Source: www.interviewmagazine.com

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• Every legislative limitation upon utterance, however valid, may in a particular case serve as an inroad upon the freedom of speech which the Constitution protects.

  Stanley Forman Reed

  Freedom Of Speech, Utterance, May

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• The question isn't whether or not to censor artists who espouse misogynistic views. The question is whether or not we support them as listeners and consumers.

  Dessa Darling

  Artist, Views, Support

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• If we can't stamp out literature in the country, we can at least stop its being brought in from outside.

  Evelyn Waugh

  Country, Literature, Stamps

  Evelyn Waugh (1958). “Vile Bodies”, p.9, Obelix Books

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• In a perfect world, there would be no censorship, because there would be no judgement. I find the hypocritical aspect disconcerting, to say the least. We can show people being murdered on television, but I'm not able to say "chickenshit" in public. At the same time, I understand that people are afraid. Because I think censorship is about fear. It's just fear being projected onto art.

  Alanis Morissette

  Art, Thinking, People

  Source: www.interviewmagazine.com

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• I am of course confident that I will fulfill my tasks as a writer in all circumstances - from my grave even more successfully and more irrefutably than in my lifetime.

  Aleksandr Solzhenitsyn

  Tasks, Lifetime, Graves

  "The Struggle Intensifies". Aleksandr Solzhenitsyn's open letter to the Fourth Soviet Writers' Congress (May 16, 1967) as translated in "Solzhenitsyn: A Documentary Record" edited by Leopold Labedz, 1970.

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• The abuse dies in a day; but the denial slays the life of the people and entombs the hope of the race.

  Charles Bradlaugh

  Ignorance, Race, People

  Charles Bradlaugh's speech at Hall of Science (circa 1880), as quoted in Annie Besant "Annie Besant: An Autobiography", 1893.

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• The test of democracy is freedom of criticism.

  David Ben-Gurion

  Freedom, Democracy, Criticism

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• Political writing in our time consists almost entirely of prefabricated phrases bolted together like the pieces of a child's Meccano set. It is the unavoidable result of self-censorship. To write in plain, vigorous language one has to think fearlessly, and if one thinks fearlessly one cannot be politically orthodox.

  George Orwell

  Children, Writing, Thinking

  George Orwell (1986). “The complete works of George Orwell”

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• Censorship makes me really angry. I even hate it when people censor themselves.

  Emma Stone

  Hate, People, Angry

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• We cannot have a society, in which some dictator some place can start imposing censorship here in the United States.

  Barack Obama

  United States, Dictator, Imposing

  Source: www.foxnews.com

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• All the history of the stage is a struggle, the gasping of a beautiful child born at the point of death. The moralists, censorship and oppression, technology, and now poverty have all tried to destroy her. Only we, the actors and audiences, have kept her alive.

  Gene Wolfe

  Beautiful, Art, Children

  Gene Wolfe (2009). “The very best of Gene Wolfe: a definitive retrospective of his finest short fiction”

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• It is the characteristic of the most stringent censorships that they give credibility to the opinions they attack.

  Voltaire

  Government, Giving, Opinion

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• We must be talented, powerful and resilient creatures indeed given how much we manage to produce despite the constant undercutting, ridicule and needless censorship we aim at ourselves.

  Seth

  Powerful, Resilient, Produce

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• A forbidden writing is thought to be a certain spark of truth, that flies up in the face of them who seek to tread it out.

  Francis Bacon

  Writing, Sparks, Faces

  Francis Bacon, John Milton (2010). “Essays, Civil and Moral Aeropagitica Religio Medici”, p.228, Cosimo, Inc.

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• I wanted to do my artistic work, and in Iran you have censorship. It was difficult for me to do the work I wanted to do.

  Marjane Satrapi

  Iran, Artistic, Difficult

  "Never Mind the Mullahs". Interview with Vivienne Walt, www.motherjones.com. January/February 2008.

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• Let me be clear: I am not an advocate of censorship.

  Mike Rogers

  Advocating, Let Me, Clear

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• But it also came at a significant cost for human rights, and today's restricted freedom of expression, self-censorship and stunted multiparty democracy.

  Phil Robertson

  Freedom, Party, Rights

  "Singapore's Lee Kuan Yew, 'a true giant of history', dies aged 91" by Kevin Rawlinson, Kirsten Han, www.theguardian.com. March 22, 2015.

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• Censorship is the commonest social blasphemy because it is mostly concealed, built into us by indolence, self-interest and cowardice.

  John Osborne

  Fear, Self, Propaganda

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• The Constitution exists precisely so that opinions and judgments, including esthetic and moral judgments about art and literature, can be formed, tested, and expressed. What the Constitution says is that these judgments are for the individual to make, not for the Government to decree, even with the mandate or approval of a majority. Technology expands the capacity to choose; and it denies the potential of this revolution if we assume the Government is best positioned to make these choices for us.

  Anthony Kennedy

  Art, Technology, Government

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• For if we are observed in all matters, we are constantly under threat of correction, judgment, criticism, even plagiarism of our own uniqueness. We become children, fettered under watchful eyes, constantly fearful that-either now or in the uncertain future-patterns we leave behind will be brought back to implicate us, by whatever authority has now become focused upon our once-private and innocent acts. We lose our individuality, because everything we do is observable and recordable.

  Bruce Schneier

  Children, Eye, Individuality

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• When the conspiracy of lies surrounding me demands of me to silence the one word of truth given to me, that word becomes the one word I wish to utter above all others.

  André Brink

  Lying, Silence, Wish

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• A censor is a man who knows more than he thinks you ought to.

  Granville Hicks

  Men, Thinking, Liberty

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• My intention was to write a chapter of the moral history of my country and I chose Dublin for the scene because that city seemed to me the centre of paralysis.

  James Joyce

  Country, Writing, Men

  "A brief survey of the short story part 32: James Joyce" by Chris Power, www.theguardian.com. March 9, 2011.

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