Best 381 quotes in «censorship quotes» category

If we think to regulat Printing, thereby to rectifie manners, we must regulat all recreations and pastimes, all that is delightfull to Man.

If you accept – and I do – that freedom of speech is important, then you are going to have to defend the indefensible. That means you are going to be defending the right of people to read, or to write, or to say, what you don’t say or like or want said. The Law is a huge blunt weapon that does not and will not make distinctions between what you find acceptable and what you don’t. This is how the Law is made. People making art find out where the limits of free expression are by going beyond them and getting into trouble. [...] The Law is a blunt instrument. It’s not a scalpel. It’s a club. If there is something you consider indefensible, and there is something you consider defensible, and the same laws can take them both out, you are going to find yourself defending the indefensible.

If you advocate for the censorship of speech that does not expressly incite violence, limit your own vocabulary to a set number of words for one week. Cease to use several common words or phrases you often use and watch as your ability to communicate and think diminish. Now do you still want censorship knowing it is not just the limiting of speech but thought? If you do, you may wish to look inward about why oppressive impulses come so easily when you disagree with others.

If your written words become literal nails to crucify you with, then you have done your job well. You provoked a reaction, whether it is positive or negative is irrelevant. Writing that evokes no reaction is a body without a soul.

I have yet to meet an English teacher who assigned a book to damage a kid.

I loathe it when they [English teachers] are bullied by no-nothing parents or cowardly school boards.

[Blog post, March 10, 2014]

Incapaci di decifrare o di capire tutto ciò che fosse complicato o fuori dagli schemi, infuriati con quelli che consideravano serpi in seno, gli integralisti furono costretti a imporre le loro formule rudimentali anche alla narrativa. E così come perseguitarono i colori della realtà, cercando di adattarla al loro mondo in bianco e nero, si accanirono - al pari dei loro antagonisti ideologici - contro qualsiasi forma di interiorità in narrativa, finendo per perseguitare proprio i romanzi privi di contenuti politici. Come quelli della pericolosissima Jane Austen, ad esempio.

In a society run by terror, no statements whatsoever can be taken seriously. They are all forced, and it is the duty of every honest man to ignore them.

In de taal zit een vrijheid verborgen waar de censor niet bij kan. Al onze schrijvers kennen dat geheim.

In general, opinions contrary to those commonly received can only obtain a hearing by studied moderation of language, and the most cautious avoidance of unnecessary offence, from which they hardly ever deviate even in a slight degree without losing ground: while unmeasured vituperation employed on the side of the prevailing opinion, really does deter people from professing contrary opinions, and from listening to those who profess them.

Information is the oxygen of the modern age. It seeps through the walls topped by barbed wire, it wafts across the electrified borders. ... The Goliath of totalitarianism will be brought down by the David of the microchip.

In front of me 327 pages of the manuscript [Master and Margarita] (about 22 chapters). The most important remains - editing, and it's going to be hard. I will have to pay close attention to details. Maybe even re-write some things... 'What's its future?' you ask? I don't know. Possibly, you will store the manuscript in one of the drawers, next to my 'killed' plays, and occasionally it will be in your thoughts. Then again, you don't know the future. My own judgement of the book is already made and I think it truly deserves being hidden away in the darkness of some chest. [Bulgakov from Moscow to his wife on June 15 1938]

In order to become the chisel that breaks the marble inside us, the artist must first become the hammer." [Soviet censor of paintings and photos]

In his book The Captive Mind, written in 1951-2 and published in the West in 1953, the Polish poet and essayist Czeslaw Milosz paid Orwell one of the greatest compliments that one writer has ever bestowed upon another. Milosz had seen the Stalinisation of Eastern Europe from the inside, as a cultural official. He wrote, of his fellow-sufferers: A few have become acquainted with Orwell’s 1984; because it is both difficult to obtain and dangerous to possess, it is known only to certain members of the Inner Party. Orwell fascinates them through his insight into details they know well, and through his use of Swiftian satire. Such a form of writing is forbidden by the New Faith because allegory, by nature manifold in meaning, would trespass beyond the prescriptions of socialist realism and the demands of the censor. Even those who know Orwell only by hearsay are amazed that a writer who never lived in Russia should have so keen a perception into its life. Only one or two years after Orwell’s death, in other words, his book about a secret book circulated only within the Inner Party was itself a secret book circulated only within the Inner Party.

In short, whoever does violence to truth or its expression eventually mutilates justice, even though he thinks he is serving it. From this point of view, we shall deny to the very end that a press is true because it is revolutionary; it will be revolutionary only if it is true, and never otherwise.

In the ensuing centuries, texts that contained such dangerous ideas paid a heavy price for their ‘heresy’. As has been lucidly argued by Dirk Rohmann, an academic who has produced a comprehensive and powerful account of the effect of Christianity on books, some of the greatest figures in the early Church rounded on the atomists. Augustine disliked atomism for precisely the same reason that atomists liked it: it weakened mankind’s terror of divine punishment and Hell. Texts by philosophical schools that championed atomic theory suffered. The Greek philosopher Democritus had perhaps done more than anyone to popularize this theory – though not only this one. Democritus was an astonishing polymath who had written works on a breathless array of other topics. A far from complete list of his titles includes: On History; On Nature; the Science of Medicine; On the Tangents of the Circle and the Sphere; On Irrational Lines and Solids; On the Causes of Celestial Phenomena; On the Causes of Atmospheric Phenomena; On Reflected Images . . . The list goes on. Today Democritus’s most famous theory is his atomism. What did the other theories state? We have no idea: every single one of his works was lost in the ensuing centuries. As the eminent physicist Carlo Rovelli recently wrote, after citing an even longer list of the philosopher’s titles: ‘the loss of the works of Democritus in their entirety is the greatest intellectual tragedy to ensue from the collapse of the old classical civilisation’.

In the chamber, [Frances Hamling] sat close to her husband [William Hamling, about to go before the US Supreme Court on 4/15/74], trying to repress the anxiety she felt about his future. Four years in prison and $87,000 in fines was hardly a matter of casual contemplation. Since nobody was supposed to speak or even whisper in the chamber, she diverted herself by glancing around at the room's opulent interior, the impressive bone-white china columns and red velvet draperies that formed the background behind the polished judicial bench and high black leather chairs. A gold clock hung down from between two pillars, signaling that it was 9:57 a.m. -- a few minutes before the justices' scheduled arrival. Along the upper edge of the front of the room, close to the top of the forty-four-foot ceiling, Frances noticed an interesting, voluptuous section of Classical art: It was a golden beige marble frieze that extended across the width of the room and showed about twenty nude and seminude men, women, and children gathered in various poses. The figures symbolized the embodiment of human wisdom and truth, righteousness, and virtue; but the bodies to her could as easily have represented an assemblage of Roman hedonists or orgiasts, and it struck her as ironic that such a scene should be hovering over the heads of the jurists who would be questioning her husband's use of illustrations in the Presidential Report on Obscenity and Pornography.

I once had a mind of quicksand, That dragged ideas into its depths, Inhaling specks of sunlight, Every time I drew a breath, But the world thought me a hazard, When every word I spoke, I meant, So around me they put caution tape, And filled me with cement.

In the past, censorship worked by blocking the flow of information. In the 21st century, censorship works by flooding people with irrelevant information. People just don't know what to pay attention to, and they often spend their time investigating and debating side issues.

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--all because of fear. How many have resorted to self-censorship? How many are saying to themselves, "Nope ... can't write about that. Can't teach that book. Can't have that book in our collection. Can't let my student write that editorial in the school paper.

It says a lot about Sandberg’s brand of feminism that this campaign focuses on policing language rather than bringing attention to important issues that have real impact on women and girls

Isaac Deutscher was best known—like his compatriot Joseph Conrad—for learning English at a late age and becoming a prose master in it. But, when he writes above, about the ‘fact’ that millions of people ‘may’ conclude something, he commits a solecism in any language. Like many other critics, he judges Orwell’s Nineteen Eighty-Four not as a novel or even as a polemic, but by the possibility that it may depress people. This has been the standard by which priests and censors have adjudged books to be lacking in that essential ‘uplift’ which makes them wholesome enough for mass consumption. The pretentious title of Deutscher’s essay only helps to reinforce the impression of something surreptitious being attempted.

Is there any censorship in your country’s media? Then you are definitely living in a fascist country! Censorship is the tool of the coward governments. Criminals are always afraid of the truths!

I struggle each day not to let the fear of the censor poison my writing. Where the censor rules, a dull sameness creeps into books.

I suggested, further, that the following might be sculpted: a large box filled with sixty moonshine jugs--piled high, toppling over, corks popping, liquor flowing. Disorder to match the clutter and chaos of our marvelous language. Words upon words, piled high, toppling over, thoughts popping, correspondence and conversation overflowing.

It is the press, above all, which wages a positively fanatical and slanderous struggle, tearing down everything which can be regarded as a support of national independence, cultural elevation, and the economic independence of the nation.

It's funny, but Shakespeare, with all its passion, never does too well at the box office. And d'you know why? Because most people are fools. They shrink like violets from good, honest passion, which, if only they'd be honest and admit it, is all they feel themselves in the name of love. They will wrap sex up in pretty, piffling declarations of love. The big, tough hero must carry his mate off into the bush, but by heaven, if he doesn't say, afterwards, 'I love you, darling' — cut! The censor is swooning. Or the public are.

it's going great. Two months in, and I've created three apps." "Apps?" "For people who buy my book as an e-book --which will be everybody. The first is called Don't Look. It's for the overly sensitive. It blurs and turns the type red when a dog dies or a baby is born with a birth defect. Stuff like that. My second is It's Not Okay When You Say It, and it delivers an electrical zap if the reader laughs at a racial slur. My third is Jesus Thesaurus, which replaces explicit sexual language with church words. So, when one of my characters 'saints' a guy's 'disciple', He'll beg her to 'cavalry' his 'Baptists' and 'shout amen'.

It's now very common to hear people say, 'I'm rather offended by that.' As if that gives them certain rights. It's actually nothing more... than a whine. 'I find that offensive.' It has no meaning; it has no purpose; it has no reason to be respected as a phrase. 'I am offended by that.' Well, so fucking what." [I saw hate in a graveyard -- Stephen Fry, The Guardian, 5 June 2005]

It was a pleasure to burn. It was a special pleasure to see things eaten, to see things blackened and changed. With the brass nozzle in his fists, with this great python spitting its venomous kerosene upon the world, the blood pounded in his head, and his hands were the hands of some amazing conductor playing all the symphonies of blazing and burning to bring down the tatters and charcoal ruins of history. With his symbolic helmet numbered 451 on his stolid head, and his eyes all orange flame with the thought of what came next, he flicked the igniter and the house jumped up in a gorging fire that burned the evening sky red and yellow and black. He strode in a swarm of fireflies. He wanted above all, like the old joke, to shove a marshmallow on a stick in the furnace, while the flapping pigeon-winged books died on the porch and lawn of the house. While the books went up in sparkling whirls and blew away on a wind turned dark with burning.

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.

It was Father Charles Coughlin, of Detroit, who had first thought out the device of freeing himself from any censorship of his political sermons on the Mount by "buying his own time on the air"— it being only in the twentieth century that mankind has been able to buy Time as it buys soap and gasoline. This invention was almost equal, in its effect on all American life and thought, to Henry Ford's early conception of selling cars cheap to millions of people, instead of selling a few as luxuries.

It was, for him, an object lesson in the importance of the “better out than in” free speech argument—that it was better to allow even the most reprehensible speech than to sweep it under the carpet, better to publicly contest and perhaps deride what was loathsome than to give it the glamour of taboo, and that, for the most part, people could be trusted to tell the good from the bad.

I want all the books on the shelves. I want the books with dinosaur words like nigger that show the skeletons in our national closet. I want books with the word cunt as well as the word kike. Words don't scare me. Suppressing them does.

I was winning awards, getting raises, lecturing college classes, appearing on TV shows, and judging journalism contests. And then I wrote some stories that made me realize how sadly misplaced my bliss had been. The reason I'd enjoyed such smooth sailing for so long hadn't been, as I'd assumed, because I was careful and diligent and good at my job... The truth was that, in all those years, I hadn't written anything important enough to suppress.

Look, I get it. Loose stools are grosser than solid ones. But the censor is using the context of her own life history with all her hang-ups to answer the question, "Is there a defensible ratio of fiber to water in this stool?

Manufacturing consent begins by weaponizing the meme and utilizing the censorship algorithms of Google, Facebook, Twitter and YouTube.

manuscripts don't burn" - "(рукописи не горят)

Media censorship is a prohibition of words and pictures. The war on drugs is a complete failure, and so is the American war on words. When you forbid a word, you give it power. Self-proclaimed rebels will use words like shit or fuck, simply to shock and sound cool.

Much was preserved. Much, much more was destroyed. It has been estimated that less than ten per cent of all classical literature has survived into the modern era. For Latin, the figure is even worse: it is estimated that only one hundredth of all Latin literature remains. If this was ‘preservation’ – as it is often claimed to be – then it was astonishingly incompetent. If it was censorship, it was brilliantly effective.

Medical studies have shown that cursing reduces levels of stress and pain. Repressing your anger is not healthy. It's much better to verbalize it, and let off steam. Maybe all that repressed anger is the reason why there are so many serial killers in America.

#MOFA = Make Orwell Fiction Again

Most of what once existed is gone... Nature takes one toll, malice another... most of what historians study survives because it was purposely kept... (it) is called the historical record, & it is maddeningly uneven, asymmetrical, & unfair.

Nick chided a censor, who wished some books gone, and suggested she scan Fahrenheit 451. For the book-budget cutters, Old Claus had no plan, cause if they could read, they just read Ayn Rand.

My task was nothing less than the moulding of the cultural sense of the nation, and it had two main heads. I had to guide taste into the right channels and I had to see that no one else guided it into the wrong. Thus it was just as important to discourage bad influence as to encourage good. To send a promising and impecunious young painter to an Art School with a Government grant was in itself a praiseworthy act ; but it was useless from the national point of view if it was not accompanied by drastic measures to keep the most suggestive sorts of French literature from entering our ports. To help a young genius to Valhalla was one thing. But it was almost as important, from the national point of view, to see that our youth was not brought into contacts with those packets of French postcards which are labelled, “Très rare, très curieux. Discrétion.” I take a good deal of credit to myself—though, of course, Pettinger got the kudos at the time—for tightening up the administration of the Customs so that such authors as Joyce, whose name was either James or John—I forget which—Stein, Baudelaire, Louÿs, Anatole France, Proust, Freud, Jung, Rolland, and others, were intercepted at the ports by the special Pornographie section of the Constabulary which I created with men borrowed from the uniformed branch of the Metropolitan Police. These men, ail of whom could read and write English fluently, performed admirable service in the détection of immoral literature. Art Exhibitions also came within the scope of my department, and I closed at least a dozen objection-able ones which contained nudes and other suggestive subjects. It was always a matter of regret to me that I was unable to take strong action about Epstein’s “Genesis.” But the Marchioness of Risborough—a leader of taste and fashion, who was not only persona gratissima in exalted circles, but also the daughter of a millionaire steelmaker—had publicly declared her admiration of it, and so there was nothing for me to do except to déclaré mine. And now, looking back on it, I realize how right I was to choose Lady Risborough’s opinion rather than the small advantages to be obtained from Epstein’s gratitude. Small tradesmen who tried to sell miniature replicas of the “Genesis” were ruthlessly prosecuted, however, by my department on the charge of exhibiting, or causing to be exhibited, indécent figures.

No matter what you do, no matter what you say, someone out there will proclaim how outraged they are, because they think it's their job to be offended by every God damn thing. It makes people feel important. It makes them feel powerful. It makes them feel like their opinion is relevant.

Normally, anything done in the name of 'the kids' strikes me as either slightly sentimental or faintly sinister—that redolence of moral blackmail that adheres to certain charitable appeals and certain kinds of politician. (Not for nothing is baby-kissing the synonym for public insincerity.)

Nothing motivates a man’s actions like a strict ban.

No," said Dina. "We don't burn books." "Who's we?" "People with an ounce of brain.