Did you ever hear anyone say “That work had better be banned because I might read it and it might be damanging to me”?
Censorship Quotes
For books are not absolutely dead things, but… do preserve as in a vial the purest efficacy and extraction of that living intellect that bred them. I know they are as lively, and as vigorously productive, as those fabulous Dragon’s teeth; and being sown up and down, may chance to spring up armed men. And […]
One of the curious things about censorship is that no one seems to want it for himself. We want censorship to protect someone else – the young, the unstable, the suggestible, the stupid. I have never heard of anyone who wanted a film banned because otherwise he might see it and be harmed.
The people are the only censors of their governors, and even their errors will tend to keep these to the true principles of their institution.
You have not converted a man because you have silenced him.
I never heard of anyone who was really literate or who ever really loved books who wanted to suppress any of them. Censors only read a book with great difficulty, moving their lips as they puzzle out each syllable, when someone tells them that the book is unfit to read.
No government ought to be without censors; and where the press is free, no one ever will.
This was not to suppress anything. (when asked about calling CBS News to ask them to suppress the embarrassing photos of Iraqi prisoners)
The idea of using censors to bar thoughts of sex is dangerous. A person without sex thoughts is abnormal.
I am really mortified to be told that, in the United States of America, a fact like this can become a subject to inquiry, and of criminal inquiry, too, as an offense against religion; that a question about the sale of a book can be carried before the civil magistrate. Is this then our freedom […]
