Censorship Quotes

If you believe that I'm a cop killer, you believe David Bowie is an astronaut.

The reading or non-reading a book will never keep down a single petticoat.

Evey Hammond: Where did you get all this stuff?
V: Oh, here and there, mostly from the Ministry of Objectionable Materials.
Evey Hammond: You stole them?
V: Oh, heavens, no. Stealing implies ownership. You can't steal from the censor; I merely reclaimed them.

Do you believe in something enough to cope with public censorship, the risk of imprisonment, and the loss of your ability to work? What if you had the opportunity to earn millions of dollars if you just didn’t protest and went along for the ride?

Assassination is the extreme form of censorship.

Inspiréd merit so by breath is barred.

Censorship, like charity, should begin at home, but unlike charity, it should end there.

...one may not wish to read Ulysses; that is quite understandable. But when such a real artist in words, as Joyce undoubtedly is, seeks to draw a true picture of the lower middle class in a European city, ought it be impossible for the American public legally to see that picture?

Let children read whatever they want and then talk about it with them. If parents and kids can talk together, we won't have as much censorship because we won't have as much fear

God forbid that any book should be banned. The practice is as indefensible as infanticide.

I think the most un-American thing you can say is, 'You can't say that'

Can you imagine going around your neighborhood with a piece of paper that says, “I went into the LIBRARY and found a BOOK with a DIRTY WORD in it, and now I want it LOCKED IN THE BASEMENT and GUARDED by a WOLVERINE so that THE PRECIOUS CHILDREN do not see the WORD. Please sign my petition.”

You can cage the singer but not the song.

I disapprove of what you say, but I will defend to the death your right to say it.

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.

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.

The books that the world calls immoral are the books that show the world its own shame.

There is nothing magical in them at all. The magic is only in what books say, how they stitched the patches of the universe together into one garment for us.

There is no such thing as a moral book or an immoral book. Books are well written or badly written. That is all.

Censorship is telling a man he can't have a steak just because a baby can't chew it.