Share on Facebook Share on Twitter Comment on this quote Share via Email Print this Page [221-240] of 245 Censorship quotesCensorship QuotesCensorship Previous 20 quotes Next 20 quotes Censorship is telling a man he can't have a steak just because a baby can't chew it.~ Mark Twain According to the Taranto Principle, the press's failure to hold left-wingers accountable for bad behavior merely encourages the left's bad behavior to the point that its candidates are repellent to ordinary Americans.~ R. Emmett Tyrrell, Jr. An unexamined idea, to paraphrase Socrates, is not worth having and a society whose ideas are never explored for possible error may eventually find its foundations insecure.~ Mark Van Doren Is it not ironical that in a planned society of controlled workers given compulsory assignments, where religious expression is suppressed, the press controlled, and all media of communication censored, where a puppet government is encouraged but denied any real authority, where great attention is given to efficiency and character reports, and attendance at cultural assemblies is mandatory, where it is avowed that all will be administered to each according to his needs and performance required from each according to his abilities, and where those who flee are tracked down, returned, and punished for trying to escape - in short in the milieu of the typical large American secondary school - we attempt to teach 'the democratic system'?~ Royce Van Norman It is the characteristic of the most stringent censorships, that they give credibility to the opinions they attack.~ Voltaire To learn who rules over you, simply find out who you are not allowed to criticize.~ Voltaire All these people talk so eloquently about getting back to good old-fashioned values…and I say let’s get back to the good old-fashioned First Amendment of the good old-fashioned Constitution of the United States – and to hell with the censors! Give me knowledge or give me death!~ Kurt Vonnegut, Jr. The censor’s sword pierces deeply into the heart of free expression.~ Earl Warren I believe in censorship. After all, I made a fortune out of it.~ Mae West God forbid that any book should be banned. The practice is as indefensible as infanticide.~ Rebecca West But once a culture develops sufficiently to become skeptical, the idea of censorship becomes less attractive. To suppress a book or a picture or a sculpture or a play or a film is a terrible act of aggression against the artist who created it. This is a miming of capital punishment; it destroys the life that has been emanated by a life.~ Rebecca West There is a point, and it is reached more easily than is supposed, where interference with freedom of the arts and literature becomes an attack on the life of society.~ Rebecca West Vietnam was the first war ever fought without any censorship. Without censorship, things can get terribly confused in the public mind.~ General William Westmoreland Freedom is not only the absence of external restraints. It is also the absence of irresistible internal compulsions, unmanageable passion, and uncensorable highlights.~ George Will I am not a conservative but I have spoken out for years against the staggering amount of blind hatred directed at black conservatives by liberals. Liberals are shockingly quick to demean and dismiss brilliant black people like Rice, Carson, Supreme Court Justice Clarence Thomas, U.S. Senator Tim Scott (R-SC), Professor Walter E. Williams and economist Thomas Sowell because they don’t fit into the role they have carved out for a black person in America. Black Americans must be obedient liberals on all things or risk being called a race traitor or an Uncle Tom.~ Juan Williams Since direct political discussion was prohibited, all literature tended to become a criticism of Russian life, and literary criticism but another form of social criticism… If the censor forbade explicit statement, he was skillfully eluded by indirection – by innocent seeming tales of other lands or times, by complicated parables, animal fables, double meanings, overtones, by investing apparently trivial events with the pent-up energies possessing the writer, so that the reader became compelled to dwell upon them until their hidden meanings became manifest.~ Bertram Wolfe Lock up your libraries if you like, but there is no gate, no lock, no bolt that you can set upon the freedom of my mind.~ Virginia Woolf To admit authorities, however heavily furred and gowned, into our libraries and let them tell us how to read, what to read, what value to place upon what we read, is to destroy the spirit of freedom which is the breath of those sanctuaries.~ Virginia Woolf If we don’t believe in freedom of expression for people we despise, we don’t believe in it at all.~ Virginia Woolf Persecution for opinion is the master vice of society.~ Frances Wright Previous 20 quotes Next 20 quotes Share on Facebook Tweet Email Print