“Censorship ends in logical completeness when nobody is allowed to read any books except the books that nobody reads.” -George Bernard Shaw
“Censorship in any form is the enemy of creativity, since it cuts off the life blood of creativity: ideas.”- Allan Jenkins
“If this nation is to be wise as well as strong, if we are to achieve our destiny, then we need more new ideas for more wise men reading more good books in more public libraries. These libraries should be open to all—except the censor. We must know all the facts and hear all the alternatives and listen to all the criticisms. Let us welcome controversial books and controversial authors. For the Bill of Rights is the guardian of our security as well as our liberty.” - John Fitzgerald Kennedy
“The trouble with censors is that they worry if a girl has cleavage. They ought to worry if she hasn't any.”- Marilyn Monroe
“Censorship reflects a society's lack of confidence in itself. It is a hallmark of an authoritarian regime.” - Potter Stewart
“Pontius Pilate was the first great censor and Jesus Christ the first great victim of censorship” -Ben Lindsey
“The first condition of progress is the removal of censorship.” -George Bernard Shaw
“If in other lands the press and books and literature of all kinds are censored, we must redouble our efforts here to keep them free” -Franklin D. Roosevelt
“I suppose that writers should, in a way, feel flattered by the censorship laws. They show a primitive fear and dread at the fearful magic of print.”-John Mortimer
“The fact is that censorship always defeats its own purpose, for it creates, in the end, the kind of society that is incapable of exercising real discretion.”
-Henry Steele Commager
“Censorship is never over for those who have experienced it. It is a brand on the imagination that affects the individual who has suffered it, forever.”
-Nadine Gordimer (South African novelist and short-story writer, 1991 Nobel Prize for Literature, b.1923)
“Advertisers, not governments, are the primary censors of media content in the United States today.”- C. Edwin Baker
“We live in oppressive times. We have, as a nation, become our own thought police; but instead of calling the process by which we limit our expression of dissent and wonder "censorship," we call it "concern for commercial liability
". -David Mamet (American Playwright, b.1947)
“Censorship is the strongest drive in human nature; sex is a weak second” -Phil Kerby
“All books can be indecent books, though recent books are bolder.
For filth, I'm glad to say, is in the mind of the beholder.
When correctly viewed, everything is lewd. I could tell you things about Peter Pan, And the Wizard of OZ, there's a dirty old man!” -AZBookAddict Tom Lehrer (American Singer, Song Writer and Mathematician, was a professor of Math at Harvard who wrote many satrical tunes (Poisioning Pigeons) in the 1960s. b.1928)
“Vietnam was the first war ever fought without any censorship. Without censorship, things can get terribly confused in the public mind.”- Gen William C. Westmoreland
“Right now I think censorship is necessary; the things they're doing and saying in films right now just shouldn't be allowed. There's no dignity anymore and I think that's very important.”-Mae West quotes (American Actress and sex symbol, 1892-1980)
“By placing discretion in the hands of an official to grant or deny a license, such a statute creates a threat of censorship that by its very existence chills free speech.” -Harry A. Blackmun
“Imagine books and music and movies being filtered and homogenized. Certified. Approved for consumption. People will be happy to give up most of their culture for the assurance that the tiny bit that comes through is safe and clean. White noise.”-Dialdar Chuck Palahniuk (American freelance Journalist, Satirist and Novelist. b.1961)
“Censorship: the reaction of the ignorant to freedom.” - Wychlea
“He is always the severest censor of the merit of others who has the least worth of his own”-Elias Lyman Maggon quotes
“Censorship is the very wall that holds creativity back from complete freedom; because without Exposure to the good and the bad, the acceptable and inappropriate, and the offensive and polite, how will the mind thrive for more than what is given?”- mluna22
“It is a truism that almost any sect, cult, or religion will legislate its creeds into law if it acquires the political power to do so, and will follow it by suppressing opposition, subverting all education to seize early the minds of the young, and by killing, locking up, or driving underground all heretics.”
-mmoss Robert A. Heinlein quotes (American science-fiction Writer, 1907-1988)
