Top 100 Quotes About Censorship
#1. We cannot have a society in which some dictator some place can start imposing censorship here in the United States. If somebody is able to intimidate folks out of releasing a satirical movie, imagine what's going to happen when they see a documentary they don't like or news reports they don't like.
Barack Obama
#2. Literature is one of the few areas left where black and white feel some identity of purpose; we all struggle under censorship.
Nadine Gordimer
#3. There are always forces at work in a society, which are really forces of censorship - either religious bodies or zealots who are always putting pressure on things, whether it's books or art or film.
John Boorman
#4. There cannot be a censor, or a censorship that does not degenerate into absurdity and corruption, there never has been, and there never will be and of all the excuses for it that there could be, that it protects superstition, and religious fanaticism would be the worst.
Christopher Hitchens
#5. Microsoft, Yahoo and others are helping to institutionalize and legitimize the integration of censorship into the global IT business model.
Rebecca MacKinnon
#6. Censorship is the thing that stops you doing what you want to do, and what writers want to talk about is what they do, not what stops them doing it.
Salman Rushdie
#7. Well, part of the thing is, like, what's the difference between censorship and social responsibility? I sometimes find that the whole censorship argument is used as a way for people to avoid the fact that they're like ...
Kathleen Hanna
#8. Chinese artists have been subversive over thousands of years, taking what they think of the government and embedding it in their art. There might be censorship of not going as far as they might.
Amy Tan
#9. Political correctness is modern day censorship. This still doesn't justify you in being a douchebag.
Kevin Focke
#10. The sooner we all learn to make a decision between disapproval and censorship, the better off society will be ... Censorship cannot get at the real evil, and it is an evil in itself.
Granville Hicks
#11. Everyone has an opinion, and the guy screaming for censorship may be the next guy to have his ideas cut off.
Richard King
#12. Censorship, telling people how to live their lives I completely disagree with.
M. Shadows
#13. There was something so unutterably ridiculous about the sight of a US company deleting posts accusing it of censorship that many other people began to protest.
G.R. Reader
#15. Censorship is a strange situation. There was times when people would burn books because they didn't like what people were doing.
Michael Berryman
#16. All censorships exist to prevent anyone from challenging current conceptions and existing institutions. All progress is initiated by challenging current conceptions, and executed by supplanting existing institutions. Consequently, the first condition of progress is the removal of censorship.
George Bernard Shaw
#17. Censorship has been my best press agent my whole life.
John Waters
#18. Whenever it's suggested that our sponsors have some kind of influence or control of what we cover in some kind of censorship through financial pressure, it's rubbish. That's never happened.
Morley Safer
#19. Censorship laws are blunt instruments, not sharp scalpels. Once enacted, they are easily misapplied to merely unpopular or only marginally dangerous speech.
Alan Dershowitz
#20. I am opposed to censorship. Censors are pretty sure fools. I have no confidence in the suppression of everyday facts.
James Harvey Robinson
#23. Motrich hasn't published a thing and never will, but the advantage of censorship is that you can be an unpublished author without anyone suspecting you lack talent - on the contrary.
Emmanuel Carrere
#24. I saw that publishing all over the world was deeply constrained by self-censorship, economics and political censorship, while the military-industrial complex was growing at a tremendous rate, and the amount of information that it was collecting about all of us vastly exceeded the public imagination.
Julian Assange
#26. I mean, believe me, I'm not for censorship.
Joe Mantegna
#27. There is clearly a constituency that appreciates the message that Google is sending, that it finds the Chinese government's attitude to the Internet and censorship unacceptable.
Rebecca MacKinnon
#28. Censorship of ideas or images or words is wrong.
Richard King
#29. The heaviest restriction upon the freedom of public opinion is not the official censorship of the Press, but the unofficial censorship by a Press which exists not so much to express opinion as to manufacture it.
Dorothy L. Sayers
#30. [T]he German censorship forbade or mutilated my every book, which was like sticking pins into my soul ...
Israel Zangwill
#31. Censorship exists to protect corruption.
Suzy Kassem
#32. Decades of indoctrination, manipulation, censorship and KGB excursions haven't altered this fact: People want a piece of their own little Something-or-Other, and, if they don't get it, have a tendency to initiate counterrevolution.
Frank Zappa
#33. In China, the problem is that with the system of censorship that's now in place, the user doesn't know to what extent, why, and under what authority there's been censorship. There's no way of appealing. There's no due process.
Rebecca MacKinnon
#34. I think media has lost its way. We must recognize that the proprietors of these organizations have put on a form of censorship. Basically, they're more interested in celebrity, narcissism, rich people, good-looking people, and successful sportsmen.
Don McCullin
#35. Is there any censorship in your country's media? Then you are definitely living in a fascist country! Censorship is the tool of the coward governments. Criminals are always afraid of the truths!
Mehmet Murat Ildan
#37. The most effective system of Internet control is not the one that has the most sophisticated and draconian system of censorship, but the one that has no need for censorship whatsoever.
Evgeny Morozov
#38. 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
#39. The Internet treats censorship as a malfunction and routes around it.
John Perry Barlow
#40. As Pa said, censorship encouraged people to believe nonsense.
John Christopher
#41. And that is the problem with a society that doesn't read books. The most painful form of censorship does not come from a centralized, repressive government. It is a cast, black cloak of a nation's indifference.
Lourd De Veyra
#42. 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.
Michael Kinsley
#43. I think the best thing in cases of censorship or things like this is to get as much media as possible.
Kathy Acker
#44. It takes a strong stomach and a thick skin to be a female activist fighting online censorship in Pakistan.
Rebecca MacKinnon
#46. They still had the Lord Chamberlain, so we had this idiotic censorship. We were allowed three Jesus Christs instead of 10. Why three were OK, I don't know.
Uta Hagen
#47. The whole principle (censorship) is wrong; it's like demanding that grown men live on skim milk because the baby can't eat steak.
Robert A. Heinlein
#48. 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.
Ai Weiwei
#50. The US constitution's First Amendment rights only cover Americans, but I believe that in a democracy the competition of ideas and free speech should combat beliefs that it does not agree with - more speech and debate, not censorship.
Joichi Ito
#51. One thing is for sure-none of the arts flourishes on censorship and repression. And by this time it should be evident that the American public is capable of doing its own censoring.
Eleanor Roosevelt
#52. Censorship is not an occupation that attracts intelligent, subtle minds. Censors can and often have been outwitted. But the game of slipping Aesopian messages past the censor is ultimately a sterile one, diverting writers from their proper task.
J.M. Coetzee
#53. There is a long standing tradition of using code to evade censorship in China, so that goes on. The trouble is the Chinese government has created the world's most sophisticated censorship machine.
John Palfrey
#55. Censorship ends in logical completeness when nobody is allowed to read any books except the books that nobody can read.
[As quoted in Literary Censorship in England (in Current Opinion, Vol. 55, No. 5, November 1913)]
George Bernard Shaw
#56. Now, after I have published a few books, I can clearly feel the impact of censorship when I write. For example, I'll think of a sentence, and then realize that it will for sure get deleted. Then I won't even write it down.
Murong Xuecun
#57. As we see censorship it is a stupid giant traffic policeman answering "Yes" to "Am I my brother's copper?" He guards a one-way street and his semaphore has four signs, all marked "stop.
Franklin P. Adams
#58. If [domain seizure] isn't direct censorship, I don't know what is.
Dan Gillmor
#59. All of Shakespeare's plays were written under this law of censorship, which is why they are set in the past or in foreign countries, separated from the hot topics of Elizabethan and Jacobean England by the dramatic distance of time or space.
William Shakespeare
#60. Schools - play the race card incessantly against their fellow students and their professors, leading to an atmosphere of nervous self-censorship.
Anonymous
#61. The value of universal literacy is of course questionable in a society that practices the strictest form of censorship.
Victor Andres Triay
#62. In this age of censorship, I mourn the loss of books that will never be written, I mourn the voices that will be silenced-writers' voices, teachers' voices, students' voices-and all because of fear.
Judy Blume
#63. Heretical views arise when the truth is uncertain, and it is only when the truth is uncertain that censorship is invoked.
Bertrand Russell
#64. We Negro writers, just by being black, have been on the blacklist all our lives. Censorship for us begins at the color line.
Langston Hughes
#65. The Central Propaganda Department is the highest-ranking censorship agency in China. And it has control over everything from the appointment of newspaper editors to university professors to the way that films are cut and distributed.
Evan Osnos
#66. Censorship has kind of disappeared in a way because everything is accessible online.
Cliff Martinez
#67. I don't for one second think about the possibility of censorship when I am writing a new book. I know I am a person who cares about kids and who cares about truth and I am guided by my own instincts, and trust them.
Lois Lowry
#69. By deciding what is, and is not, allowed to be discussed in a review,
by removing discussion of social context, and saying that only the
words on the page count, Goodreads is ignoring fifty years of development
of literary criticism, and is engaging in censorship.
G.R. Reader
#70. The dictatorship is embodied in the formal structure of the film (Days of 36). Imposed silence was one of the conditions under which we worked. The film is... made in such a way that the spectator realizes that censorship is involved.
Theodoros Angelopoulos
#71. There is little value in insuring the survival of our nation if our traditions do not survive with it. And there is very grave danger that an announced need for increased security will be seized upon by those anxious to expand its meaning to the very limits of official censorship and concealment.
John F. Kennedy
#72. When there is official censorship it is a sign that speech is serious. Where there is none, it is pretty certain that the official spokesmen have all the loud-speakers.
Paul Goodman
#73. Access to the outside world is preventing more censorship. I do think information flow is happening in China.. There's no doubt in my mind that it's been a huge plus.
Bill Gates
#74. The people are fed up with corruption and embezzlement. They object to censorship. The first thing that the people of Iran want is free elections.
Shirin Ebadi
#75. As to the evil which results from a censorship, it is impossible to measure it, for it is impossible to tell where it ends.
Jeremy Bentham
#76. While the Internet is censored in China, the censorship is allowing a level of speech to take place that's unprecedented.
Ethan Zuckerman
#77. It's always considered bad taste to comment on a tragedy right when it's happening, but I love when something is considered too soon to talk about because then you can blast past that social censorship to get into something real.
Margaret Cho
#78. 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
#79. The sinister fact about literary censorship in England is that it is largely voluntary. Unpopular ideas can be silenced, and inconvenient facts kept dark, without the need for any official ban.
George Orwell
#80. 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.
Alan Furst
#81. When I started to write, it was the '70s, and throughout that decade, we didn't have any problems with book challenges or censorship.
Judy Blume
#82. in the month-by-month process of editorial criticism and censorship, Hardy never lost his fierce contempt for all forms of 'tampering with natural truth
Thomas Hardy
#83. No one willingly reverts to the past unless all his actions have passed his own censorship, which is never deceived.
Seneca.
#84. If there had been a censorship of the press in Rome we should have had today neither Horace nor Juvenal, nor the philosophical writings of Cicero.
Voltaire
#85. Exile as a mode of genius no longer exists; in place of Joyce we have the fragments of work appearing in Index on Censorship.
Nadine Gordimer
#86. Here we have bishops, priests, and deacons, a Censorship Board, vigilant librarians, confraternities and sodalities, Duce Maria, Legions of Mary, Knights of this Christian order and Knights of that one, all surrounding the sinner's free will in an embattled circle.
Sean O'Casey
#87. To reject censorship after studying the risks involved is very well. To reject it ex cathedra, in the tones of Calvin pronouncing a dogma, eyes and mind closed to the possible consequences, the even marginally possible, is to make things too comfortable for oneself.
Storm Jameson
#88. I like the idea that there's no censorship, because it's consistent with my views that we live in a free society and people ought to be able to express their views.
Jerry Springer
#89. In a democracy, you have to find a market niche, make sure a novel is 'interesting' and 'spectacular.' That may be the toughest censorship of all.
Imre Kertesz
#90. We change people through conversation, not through censorship.
Jay-Z
#91. Submitting to censorship is to enter the seductive world of 'The Giver': the world where there are no bad words and no bad deeds. But it is also the world where choice has been taken away and reality distorted. And that is the most dangerous world of all.
Lois Lowry
#92. And that's the most horrible thing about censorship: To avoid falling afoul of the censors, we question ourselves and censor ourselves and make a big deal out of things in our heads. We do the work of the control freaks for them, out of a desire to avoid them.
G.R. Reader
#93. The trend in China is toward tighter and tighter control. They are basically improving their censorship mechanisms.
Rebecca MacKinnon
#94. There was no censorship of the press: in general, the War Measures Act could have been made even more radical.
Robert Bourassa
#95. The worst kind of censorship is the kind that takes place in your own mind before you sit down to a typewriter.
Paddy Chayefsky
#96. I don't engage in self-censorship. But I do change everybody to have red hair in the last draft ... If you give people red hair when in real life they haven't got red hair, I've noticed they don't recognize themselves, anyway.
Carol Bly
#97. I hate censorship, man. I really do.
Jane Levy
#98. As a journalist, you know you are doing your job properly when you manage to upset rich, powerful and entitled people who are used to getting their own way,and you know you've really got under their skin when they pursue censorship, the avenue of last resort since time immemorial.
Guy Adams
#99. We are in an era where censorship is creeping back in through the Patriot Act and where people are.. being intimidated not to speak about what we should be speaking about,.
Gerald Nicosia
#100. Even with censorship, the Internet is a force for change.
Peter Singer
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