37 Quotes About Censorship

In a world where information flows freely and opinions are shared with the click of a button, the concept of censorship remains a powerful and often controversial topic. Throughout history, voices have been silenced, ideas suppressed, and creativity stifled in the name of control and conformity. Yet, the human spirit's unwavering desire for freedom of expression has given rise to some of the most profound and thought-provoking statements on the subject. In this collection, we delve into 37 of the most impactful quotes about censorship, offering insights from writers, philosophers, and activists who have boldly challenged the boundaries of expression. Join us as we explore these timeless words that remind us of the importance of safeguarding our right to speak, think, and share without restraint.

1. “Don't join the book burners. Don't think you're going to conceal faults by concealing evidence that they ever existed. Don't be afraid to go in your library and read every book...” - Dwight D. Eisenhower

2. “manuscripts don't burn" - "(рукописи не горят)” - Mikhail Bulgakov

3. “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. In the long run it will create a generation incapable of appreciating the difference between independence of thought and subservience.” - Henry Steele Commager

4. “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

5. “Where they have burned books, they will end in burning human beings.” - Heinrich Heine

6. “Censorship, like charity, should begin at home; but unlike charity, it should end there.” - Clare Luce Booth

7. “What is freedom of expression? Without the freedom to offend, it ceases to exist.” - Salman Rushdie

8. “All censorships exist to prevent anyone from challenging current conceptions and existing institutions. All progress is initiated by challenging current conceptions, and executed by supplanting existing institutions. Consequently, the first condition of progress is the removal of censorship.” - George Bernard Shaw

9. “Once a government is committed to the principle of silencing the voice of opposition, it has only one way to go, and that is down the path of increasingly repressive measures, until it becomes a source of terror to all its citizens and creates a country where everyone lives in fear."[Special Message to the Congress on the Internal Security of the United States, August 8, 1950]” - Harry S. Truman

10. “Adam was but human—this explains it all. He did not want the apple for the apple's sake, he wanted it only because it was forbidden. The mistake was in not forbidding the serpent; then he would have eaten the serpent.” - Mark Twain

11. “If you can't say "Fuck" you can't say, "Fuck the government.” - Lenny Bruce

12. “The censor's sword pierces deeply into the heart of free expression.” - Earl Warren

13. “There is no such thing as a dirty word. Nor is there a word so powerful, that it's going to send the listener to the lake of fire upon hearing it.” - Frank Zappa

14. “There's nothing like a shovel full of dirt to encourage literacy.” - Margaret Atwood

15. “Our time prides itself on having finally achieved the freedom from censorship for which libertarians in all ages have struggled...The credit for these great achievements is claimed by the new spirit of rationalism, a rationalism that, it is argued, has finally been able to tear from man's eyes the shrouds imposed by mystical thought, religion, and such powerful illusions as freedom and dignity. Science has given us this great victory over ignorance. But, on closer examination, this victory too can be seen as an Orwellian triumph of an even higher ignorance: what we have gained is a new conformism, which permits us to say anything that can be said in the functional languages of instrumental reason, but forbids us to allude to...the living truth...so we may discuss the very manufacture of life and its 'objective' manipulations, but we may not mention God, grace, or morality.” - Joseph Weizenbaum

16. “As Pa said, censorship encouraged people to believe nonsense.” - John Christopher

17. “You can never talk religion on network TV. It makes too many people angry. You can talk about sex.” - Craig Ferguson

18. “The real heroes are the librarians and teachers who at no small risk to themselves refuse to lie down and play dead for censors.” - Bruce Coville

19. “The important task of literature is to free man, not to censor him, and that is why Puritanism was the most destructive and evil force which ever oppressed people and their literature: it created hypocrisy, perversion, fears, sterility.” - Anais Nin

20. “If there be time to expose through discussion the falsehood and fallacies, to avert the evil by the processes of education, the remedy to be applied is more speech, not enforced silence."[Whitney v. California, 274 U.S. 357 (1927)]” - Louis Brandeis

21. “A word to the unwise.Torch every book.Char every page.Burn every word to ash.Ideas are incombustible.And therein lies your real fear.” - Ellen Hopkins

22. “Only the nonreader fears books. ” - Richard Peck

23. “[O]ne man's vulgarity is another's lyric.” - John Marshall Harlan

24. “The only valid censorship of ideas is the right of people not to listen.” - Tommy Smothers

25. “If the Party could thrust its hand into the past and say of this or that event, it never happened—that, surely, was more terrifying than mere torture and death.” - George Orwell

26. “A word that turns up in TNR’s literary pieces is “tasteless. “ They use it in the same way you might reprove a toilet joke at the dinner table or around relatives. But with them it takes on moral weight. It’s a very damaging mistake: the idea that sniffing out the tasteless is the same as taste itself. It confuses censoriousness with a faculty of judgment that links the aesthetic to the moral sense.” - n+ 1 Magazine

27. “We're all watching each other, so there's no chance for censorship. The main problem is the idiot TV. If you watch local news, your head will turn to mush.” - Ray Bradbury

28. “Books can be immensely powerful. The ideas in them can change the way people think. Yet it was the Nazis and Stalin's officers who committed terrible crimes, and not Mein Kampf or the Communist Manifesto - and of course, the Manifesto contained many key ideas that are still relevant and important today, long after Stalin has gone. There is a crucial distinction between the book and its effect - it's crucial because if you talk about a book being harmful rather than its effect you begin to legitimise censorship. Abhorrent ideas need to be challenged by better ones, not banned.” - John Farndon

29. “Censors never go after books unless kids already like them. I don’t even think they know to go after books until they know that children are interested in reading this book, therefore there must be something in it that’s wrong.” - Judy Blume

30. “Too many adults wish to 'protect' teenagers when they should be stimulating them to read of life as it is lived.” - Margaret A. Edwards

31. “We knew the difference between that which cannot be expressed and that which must. We understood that while words are a path taking us only so far, they are a requisite to the journey. They are like road maps that show us which way to go.” - Laura Bynum

32. “If there's one American belief I hold above all others, it's that those who would set themselves up in judgment on matters of what is "right" and what is "best" should be given no rest; that they should have to defend their behavior most stringently. ... As a nation, we've been through too many fights to preserve our rights of free thought to let them go just because some prude with a highlighter doesn't approve of them."[Bangor Daily News, Guest Column of March 20, 1992]” - Stephen King

33. “This could seem counterintuitive for many dictators running communist or socialist single-party states, but a thriving private tech industry can contribute invaluable tools to help you implement a controllable internet. The reason is fairly simple: the technologies that transform internet applications into more personalized, efficient and enjoyable experiences are usually the same ones that increase the capacity to monitor its users.” - Laurier Rochon

34. “Chinese central government doesn't need to even lead public opinion: it just selectively stops censorship. In other words, just as censorship is a political tool, so is the absence of censorship.” - Michael Anti

35. “They told me I was not to draw.” - Mike Diana

36. “There are no wrong books. What's wrong is the fear of them.” - Bernard Malamud

37. “Why did they devise censorship? To show a world which doesn’t exist, an ideal world, or what they envisaged as the ideal world. And we wanted to depict the world as it was.” - Krzysztof Kieslowski