“Censorship, like charity, should begin at home; but unlike charity, it should end there.” – Clare Booth Luce
“If all printers were determined not to print anything till they were sure it would offend nobody, there would be very little printed.”
– Benjamin Franklin, 1730
“Fear of corrupting the mind of the younger generation is the loftiest form of cowardice.”– Holbrook Jackson
“A censor is a man who knows more than he thinks you ought to.”– Dr. Laurence Peter, Peter’s Quotations: Ideas for Our Time. New York: Morrow, 1977, p. 97
“Censorship reflects a society’s lack of confidence in itself. It is the hallmark of an authoritarian regime…”– Justice Potter Stewart, dissenting Ginzberg v. United States , 383 U.S. 463 (1966)
“All these people talk so eloquently about getting back to good old-fashioned values. Well, as an old poop I can remember back to when we had those old-fashioned values, and I say let’s get back to the good old-fashioned First Amendment of the good old-fashioned Constitution of the United States — and to hell with the censors! Give me knowledge or give me death!”– Kurt Vonnegut, author
“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
“Think for yourselves and let others enjoy the privilege to do so, too.” –Voltaire
“Take away the right to say “fuck” and you take away the right to say “fuck the government.” –Lenny Bruce
“Nature knows no indecencies; man invents them.” ~Mark Twain, Notebook, 1935
“What progress we are making. In the Middle Ages they would have burned me. Now they are content with burning my books.” ~Sigmund Freud, 1933
“Censorship feeds the dirty mind more than the four-letter word itself.” ~Dick Cavett
“To choose a good book, look in an inquisitor’s prohibited list.” ~John Aikin
“God forbid that any book should be banned. The practice is as indefensible as infanticide.” ~Rebecca West
“The books that the world calls immoral are the books that show the world its own shame.”–Oscar Wilde
“Whoever would overthrow the liberty of a nation must begin by subduing the freeness of speech.”—Benjamin Franklin
“They that can give up essential liberty to obtain a little temporary safety deserve neither liberty nor safety.”—Benjamin Franklin, Historical Review of Pennsylvania, 1759
“There are worse crimes than burning books. One of them is not reading them.”– Joseph Alexandrovitch Brodsky, 1991, Russian-American poet, b. St. Petersburg and exiled 1972 (1940-1996)
“If the human body’s obscene, complain to the manufacturer, not me.”– Larry Flynt
“Where they have burned books, they will end in burning human beings.”– Heinrich Heine
“Fear of corrupting the mind of the younger generation is the loftiest form of cowardice.”– Holbrook Jackson
“Books and ideas are the most effective weapons against intolerance and ignorance.”– Lyndon Baines Johnson, February 11, 1964
“What is freedom of expression? Without the freedom to offend, it ceases to exist.”– Salman Rushdie
“One cannot and must not try to erase the past merely because it does not fit the present.”– Golda Meir, Israeli political leader (1898-1978)
“Censorship is telling a man he can’t have a steak just because a baby can’t chew it.”– Mark Twain
“An idea that is not dangerous is unworthy of being called an idea at all.”– Oscar Wilde
