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.
Censorship ends in logical completeness when nobody is allowed to read any books except the books that nobody read.[As quoted in
(n.) The office or power of a censor; as, to stand for a censorship.
You censure this with difficulty because you have allowed it to become customary.
If all printers were determined not to print anything till they were sure it would offend nobody, there would be very little printed.
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...
The only valid censorship of ideas is the right of people not to listen.
The dirtiest book of all is the expurgated book.
Did you ever hear anyone say, 'That work had better be banned because I might read it and it might be very damaging to me'?
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.
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.
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.
Obscenity is whatever gives a judge an erection.
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?
Censorship reflects a society's lack of confidence in itself.
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.
When one writer tries to silence another, he silences every writer-and in the end he also silences himself.
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.
Any book worth banning is a book worth reading.