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| We can never be sure that the opinion we are endeavoring to stifle is a false opinion; and if we were sure, stifling it would be an evil still. ~ John Stuart Mill, |
| 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 |
| The only valid censorship of ideas is the right of people not to listen. ~ Tommy Smothers |
| Censorship reflects society’s lack of confidence in itself. It is a hallmark of an authoritarian regime. ~ Potter Stewart |
| We have a natural right to make use of our pens as of our tongue, at our peril, risk and hazard. ~ Voltaire, |
| The dirtiest book of all is the expurgated book. ~ Walt Whitman |
| Think for yourselves and let others enjoy the privilege to do so, too. ~ Voltaire |
| I am thankful for all the complaining I hear about our government because it means we have freedom of speech. ~ Nancie J. Carmody |
| The peculiar evil of silencing the expression of an opinion is, that it is robbing the human race; posterity as well as the existing generation; those who dissent from the opinion, still more than those who hold it. If the opinion is right, they are deprived of the opportunity of exchanging error for truth: if wrong, they lose, what is almost as great a benefit, the clearer perception and livelier impression of truth, produced by its collision with error. ~ John Stuart Mill, |
| Books won’t stay banned. They won’t burn. Ideas won’t go to jail. In the long run of history, the censor and the inquisitor have always lost. The only weapon against bad ideas is better ideas. ~ Alfred Whitney Griswold, |
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| Freedom of the press is guaranteed only to those who own one. ~ Abbott Joseph Liebling, "Do You Belong in Journalism?" |
| A free press can be good or bad, but, most certainly, without freedom a press will never be anything but bad. ~ Albert Camus |
| To reject the word is to reject the human search. ~ Max Lerner |
| Nature knows no indecencies; man invents them. ~ Mark Twain, |
| What progress we are making. In the Middle Ages they would have burned me. Now they are content with burning my books. ~ Sigmund Freud |
| Wherever they burn books they will also, in the end, burn human beings. ~ Heinrich Heine, |
| Every burned book enlightens the world. ~ Ralph Waldo Emerson |
| The paper burns, but the words fly away. ~ Akiba ben Joseph |
| 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?" ~ Joseph Henry Jackson |
| If you don’t have this freedom of the press, then all these little fellows are weaseling around and doing their monkey business and they never get caught. ~ Harold R. Medina |
| Obscenity is not a quality inherent in a book or picture, but is solely and exclusively a contribution of the reading mind, and hence cannot be defined in terms of the qualities of a book or picture. ~ Theodore Schroeder |
| The test of democracy is freedom of criticism. ~ David Ben-Gurion |
| If all mankind minus one were of one opinion, mankind would be no more justified in silencing that one person than he, if he had the power, would be justified in silencing mankind. ~ John Stuart Mill, |
| To choose a good book, look in an inquisitor’s prohibited list. ~ John Aikin |
| 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. ~ Claude-Adrien Helvétius |
| Censorship offends me. ~ Author Unknown |
| We are not afraid to entrust the American people with unpleasant facts, foreign ideas, alien philosophies, and competitive values. For a nation that is afraid to let its people judge the truth and falsehood in an open market is a nation that is afraid of its people. ~ John F. Kennedy |
| God forbid that any book should be banned. The practice is as indefensible as infanticide. ~ Rebecca West |
| If we don’t believe in freedom of expression for people we despise, we don’t believe in it at all. ~ Noam Chomsky |
| Take away the right to say "fuck" and you take away the right to say "fuck the government." ~ Lenny Bruce |