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Censorship Quotes
"I believe in censorship. I made a fortune out of it."
39
"I do not believe in censorship, but I believe we already have censorship in what is called marketing theory, namely the only information we get in mainstream media is for profit."
29
"They still had the Lord Chamberlain, so we had this idiotic censorship. We were allowed three Jesus Christs instead of 10. Why three were OK, I don't know."
27
"I had my first amendment rights removed by a USA judge for a video that I recorded in the public sidewalk. The right to free speech and freedom of the press only partially exists in the USA."
26
"Once you permit those who are convinced of their own superior rightness to censor and silence and suppress those who hold contrary opinions, just at that moment the citadel has been surrendered."
25
"What is also strange to me is that public libraries have always been in the forefront of opposing censorship."
24
"We get on the bandwagon in all sorts of ways - you know minor ways and major ways - like what you've just encountered which isn't censorship exactly, it was something sort of uglier in a way."
23
"Censorship feeds the dirty mind more than the four-letter word itself."
22
"As to the evil which results from a censorship, it is impossible to measure it, for it is impossible to tell where it ends."
22
"I think what we have in this country is a little more dangerous in a way because it can't be seen fully. It's sorta internal censorship. We censor each other."
21
"Let me be clear: I am not an advocate of censorship."
20
"We have reached a censorship barrier in Infidelity, to our infinite disappointment. It won't be Joan's [Joan Crawford's] next picture and we are setting it aside awhile till we can think of a way of halfwitting halfwit Hayes and his legion of decency. Pictures needed cleaning up in 1932-33...but because they were suggestive and salacious. Of course the moralists now want to apply that to all strong themes-so the crop of the last two years is feeble and false, unless it deals with children."
20
"I know that many writers have had to write under censorship and yet produced good novels; for instance, Cervantes wrote Don Quixote under Catholic censorship."
20
"Self-censorship is more efficient than any police. You write and say not what you really think, but what you believe is acceptable. By that process we lose those revolutionary ideas that could change society for the better."
19
"The censorship is such on television in the U.S. that films like mine don't stand a chance."
19
"As good almost kill a man as kill a good book: who kills a man kills a reasonable creature God's image but he who destroys a good book kills reason itself kills the image of God as it were in the eye."
18
"Without censorship, things can get terribly confused in the public mind."
18
"Obscenity is whatever happens to shock some elderly and ignorant magistrate."
17
"You seldom get a censorship attempt from a 14-year-old boy. It's the adults who get upset."
16
"By placing discretion in the hands of an official to grant or deny a license, such a statute creates a threat of censorship that by its very existence chills free speech."
16
"The dirtiest book of all is the expurgated book."
15
"Pontius Pilate was the first great censor and Jesus Christ the first great victim of censorship."
15
"Banning books gives us silence when we need speech. It closes our ears when we need to listen. It makes us blind when we need sight."
14
"We find many things to which the prohibition of them constitutes the only temptation."
13
"The best way to get kids to read a book is to say: 'This book is not appropriate for your age, and it has all sorts of horrible things in it like sex and death and some really big and complicated ideas, and you're better off not touching it until you're all grown up. I'm going to put it on this shelf and leave the room for a while. Don't open it."
7
"Censoring books that deal with difficult, adolescent issues does not protect anybody. Quite the opposite. It leaves kids in the darkness and makes them vulnerable. Censorship is the child of fear and the father of ignorance. Our children cannot afford to have the truth of the world withheld from them."
6
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