Censorship Quotes - Page 21

• Scholars, who pride themselves on speaking their minds, often engage in a form of self-censorship which is called "realism." To be "realistic" in dealing with a problem is to work only among the alternatives which the most powerful in society put forth. It is as if we are all confined to a, b, c, or d in the multiple choice test, when we know there is another possible answer. American society, although it has more freedom of expression than most societies in the world, thus sets limits beyond which respectable people are not supposed to think or speak.

  Howard Zinn

  Powerful, Pride, Thinking

  Howard Zinn (2011). “The Zinn Reader: Writings on Disobedience and Democracy”, p.289, Seven Stories Press

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• Self-censorship, whether known or unknown, is an unwelcome brake on creativity; it stifles self-expression and hence prevents a work from reaching the heights of great art.

  Semir Zeki

  Art, Creativity, Self

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• If you care for the quality of life in our American democracy, then you have to be for censorship.

  Irving Kristol

  Democracy, Quality, Care

  Irving Kristol (1983). “Reflections of a neoconservative: looking back, looking ahead”, Basic Books (AZ)

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• Any country that has sexual censorship will eventually have political censorship.

  Kenneth Tynan

  Country, Political

  "Critic Kenneth Tynan Has Mellowed But Is Still England's Stingingest Gadfly" by Godfrey Smith, archive.nytimes.com. January 9, 1966.

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• Money, first and foremost, is a medium of communication, conveying the information we call 'price'. Government control of the money supply is censorship, a violation of the First Amendment. Inflation is a lie.

  L. Neil Smith

  Lying, Communication, Government

  "Tactical Reflections" by L. Neil Smith, www.lneilsmith.org.

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• Nothing threatens freedom of the personality and the meaning of life like war, poverty, terror. But there are also indirect and only slightly more remote dangers. One of these is the stupefaction of man (the "gray mass," to use the cynical term of bourgeois prognosticators) by mass culture with its intentional or commercially motivated lowering of intellectual level and content, with its stress on entertainment or utilitarianism, and with its carefully protective censorship.

  Andrei Sakharov

  Stress, War, Men

  "Progress, Coexistence and Intellectual Freedom" by Andrei Sakharov, ("The Threat to Intellectual Freedom"), www.sakharov-center.ru. 1968.

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• A sodomite got very excited looking at a zoology text. Does this make it pornography?

  Stanislaw Jerzy Lec

  Doe, Excited, Pornography

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• Freedom to differ is not limited to things that do not matter much. That would be a mere shadow of freedom. The test of its substance is the right to differ as to things that touch the heart of the existing order.

  Robert H. Jackson

  Freedom, Heart, Order

  West Virginia State Bd. of Educ. v. Barnette (1943)

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• Freedom of speech means that you shall not do something to people either for the views they have, or the views they express, or the words they speak or write.

  Hugo Black

  Freedom, Writing, Mean

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• Woe to that nation whose literature is disturbed by the intervention of power. Because that is not just a violation against "freedom of print," it is the closing down of the heart of the nation, a slashing to pieces of its memory.

  Aleksandr Solzhenitsyn

  Memories, Freedom, Heart

  Alexandr Solzhenitsyn's Nobel lecture in literature delivered only to the Swedish Academy, www.nobelprize.org. 1970.

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• Art made tongue-tied by authority.

  William Shakespeare

  Art, Censorship In Books, Censoring Books

  Sonnet 66

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• Students throughout the totalitarian world risk life and limb for freedom of expression, many American college students are demanding that big brother restrict their freedom of speech on campus. This demand for enhanced censorship is not emanating only from the usual corner - the know-nothing fundamentalist right - it is coming from the radical, and increasingly not-so-radical left as well.

  Alan Dershowitz

  Brother, College, Government

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• Debate on public issues should be uninhibited, robust and wide-open and that...may well include vehement, caustic, and sometimes unpleasantly sharp attacks on government and public officials.

  William J. Brennan

  Issues, Government, Freedom Of Speech

  New York Times Co. v. Sullivan (1964)

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• Silence is the deadliest weapon of mass destruction.

  Cynthia McKinney

  Mass Destruction, Silence, Weapons

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• I have the same confidence in the ability of our people to reject noxious literature as I have in their capacity to sort out the true from the false in theology, economics, or any other field.

  William O. Douglas

  People, Literature, Fields

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• The only way to ensure that you and those you agree with have the right to speak is to support the right to speak of those you despise or do not like - the people with whom you do not agree.

  Pamela Wallin

  People, Support, Way

  Speech at the Senate on Erosion of Freedom of Speech, sencanada.ca. March 30, 2010.

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• ...there ought to exist the fullest liberty of professing and discussing, as a matter of ethical conviction, any doctrine, however immoral it may be considered.

  John Stuart Mill

  Liberty, Doctrine, May

  John Stuart Mill (2008). “Utilitarianism and On Liberty: Including 'Essay on Bentham' and Selections from the Writings of Jeremy Bentham and John Austin”, p.99, John Wiley & Sons

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• Inasmuch as it is manifest from experience that if the Holy Bible, translated into the vulgar tongue, be indiscriminately allowed to every one, the rashness of men will cause more evil than good to arise from it . . .

  Pope Pius IV

  Men, Evil, Tongue

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• Most Americans are aware of the brutality and injustice used to maintain the excesses of their selfish consumer society and empire. Yet I suspect...they do not care. They don’t want to see what is done in their name. They do not want to look at the rows of flag-draped coffins, the horribly maimed bodies and faces of veterans, or the human suffering in the blighted and deserted former manufacturing centers. It is too upsetting. Government and corporate censorship is therefore welcomed and appreciated.

  Curtis White

  Selfish, Government, Names

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• Banning books gives us silence when we need speech. It closes our ears when we need to listen. It makes us blind when we need sight.

  Stephen Chbosky

  Book, Sight, Giving

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• Yes, books are dangerous. They should be dangerous - they contain ideas.

  Pete Hautman

  Book, Ideas, Should

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• Books won't stay banned. They won't burn. Ideas won't go to jail. In the long run of history, the censor and the inquisitor have always lost. The only sure weapon against bad ideas is better ideas. The source of better ideas is wisdom. The surest path to wisdom is a liberal education.

  Alfred Whitney Griswold

  Education, Running, Fear

  "Quora: What Does Freedom of Speech Mean?". www.yahoo.com. May 13, 2017.

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• If some books are deemed most baneful and their sale forbid, how then with deadlier facts, not dreams of doting men? Those whom books will hurt will not be proof against events. Events, not books should be forbid.

  Herman Melville

  Dream, Hurt, Fear

  1854 'The Encantadas, Sketch Eighth', in Putnam's Monthly Magazine, May.

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• Censorship defeats the right to self determination.

  Billy Forbes

  Determination, Self, Defeat

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• If there is a bedrock principle underlying the First Amendment, it is that the government may not prohibit the expression of an idea simply because society finds the idea itself offensive or disagreeable.

  William J. Brennan

  Government, Expression, Ideas

  "Texas v. Johnson, 491 U.S. 397". 1989.

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