#censorship

Censorship is the tool of those who have the need to hide actualities from themselves and from others. Their fear is only their inability to face what is real, and I can't vent any anger against them. I only feel this appalling sadness. Somewhere, in their upbringing, they were shielded against the total facts of our existence. They were only taught to look one way when many ways exist. ↗

— Charles Bukowski

#anger

The censor pretends he is protecting tender hearts, shielding children from sex and violence, keeping the righteous in the right path, guarding against temptation, preserving virtue. How? by burning books, tearing out tongues, stretching necks, stoning women; through torture and imprisonment; by threats of violence against the victim’s friends and family; by force-feeding his own people a philosophy not only false and wicked now but false and wicked the day it was first announced by some imaginary lord and used to purchase or preserve his privileges and hoodwink the world. ↗

— William H. Gass

#family

Limiting the freedom of news 'just a little bit' is in the same category with the classic example 'a little bit pregnant. ↗

— Robert A. Heinlein

#freedom #news #freedom

Free societies...are societies in motion, and with motion comes tension, dissent, friction. Free people strike sparks, and those sparks are the best evidence of freedom's existence. ↗

— Salman Rushdie

#freedom #freedom

Religion grants its adherents malign, intoxicating and morally corrosive sensations. Destroying intellectual freedom is always evil, but only religion makes doing evil feel quite so good. ↗

— Philip Pullman

#evil #first-amendment #freedom #freedom-of-speech #hubris

As Pa said, censorship encouraged people to believe nonsense. ↗

— John Christopher

#censorship

Imprisoning philosophy within the professionalizations and specializations of an institutionalized curriculum, after the manner of our contemporary European and North American culture, is arguably a good deal more effective in neutralizing its effects than either religious censorship or political terror ↗

— Alasdair C. MacIntyre

#censorship

I have a problem with censorship by the lawyer - by legal people by the publishing firm, and I may be changing publishers. They don't seem to want to take too many risks with living people. ↗

— Kenneth Anger

#changing #firm #i #lawyer #legal

Censorship feeds the dirty mind more than the four-letter word itself. ↗

— Dick Cavett

#dirty #feeds #four-letter #itself #mind

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

#censorship #creates #defeats #discretion #end