To limit the press is to insult a nation to prohibit reading of certain books is to declare the inhabitants to be either fools or slaves.
Irreverence is our only sacred cow.
(n.) The office or power of a censor; as, to stand for a censorship.
The only valid censorship of ideas is the right of people not to listen.
When truth is replaced by silence,the silence is a lie.
There must be something in books, something we can’t imagine, to make a woman stay in a burning house; there must be something there. You don’t stay for nothing.
If there's one American belief I hold above all others, it's that those who would set themselves up in judgment on matters of what is right and what is best should be given no rest; that they should h...
You censure this with difficulty because you have allowed it to become customary.
I asked my mother why we couldn’t have books and she said, ‘The trouble with a book is that you never know what’s in it until it’s too late.'I thought to myself, 'Too late for what?
When one writer tries to silence another, he silences every writer-and in the end he also silences himself.
It's red hot, mate. I hate to think of this sort of book getting in the wrong hands. As soon as I've finished this, I shall recommend they ban it.
Censorship is the tool of those who have the need to hide actualities from themselves and from others. Their fear is only their inability to face what is real, and I can't vent any anger against them;...
Even in societies where words are often strictly controlled, messages diverse never die. Resembling seeds scattered here and there, they find all manner of cracks and crevices to root.
Free societies...are societies in motion, and with motion comes tension, dissent, friction. Free people strike sparks, and those sparks are the best evidence of freedom's existence.
The dirtiest book of all is the expurgated book.
We are willing enough to praise freedom when she is safely tucked away in the past and cannot be a nuisance. In the present, amidst dangers whose outcome we cannot foresee, we get nervous about her, a...
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.
Censorship reflects a society's lack of confidence in itself.
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.
Knowledge cannot defile nor consequently the books if the will and conscience be not defiled.
A censor is an expert in cutting remarks. A censor is a man who knows more than he thinks you ought to.