#censorship

"A leader should always be open to criticism, not silencing dissent. Any leader who does not tolerate criticism from the public is afraid of their dirty hands to be revealed under heavy light. And such a leader is dangerous, because they only feel secure in the darkness. Only a leader who is free from corruption welcomes scrutiny; for scrutiny allows a good leader to be an even greater leader."

"[I]t's not just the books under fire now that worry me. It is the books that will never be written. The books that will never be read. And all due to the fear of censorship. As always, young readers will be the real losers."

"Only the nonreader fears books."

"Calling sex by its name thereafter [the 17th c.] became more difficult and more costly. As if in order to gain mastery of it in reality, it had first been necessary to subjugate it at the level of language, control its free circulation in speech, expunge it from the things that were said, and extinguish the words that rendered it too visibly present."

"To prohibit the reading of certain books is to declare the inhabitants to be either fools or slaves."

"I resent the fact that a parental warning sticker has to be included on an album as cover art. To me that's censorship."

"I also hold very strong personal convictions about censorship. I don't believe in forbidden knowledge."

"What cannot be said above all must not be silenced but written."

"Those who make conversations impossible, make escalation inevitable."

"Digression is the soul of wit. Take the philosophic asides away from Dante, Milton or Hamlet's father's ghost and what stays is dry bones."

"Books can not be killed by fire. People die, but books never die. No man and no force can abolish memory... In this war, we know, books are weapons. And it is a part of your dedication always to make them weapons for man's freedom."

"The dirtiest book of all is the expurgated book."

"A censor is an expert in cutting remarks. A censor is a man who knows more than he thinks you ought to."

"Censorship is the child of fear and the father of ignorance."

"Where they have burned books, they will end in burning human beings."

"Censorship is to art as lynching is to justice."

"You can never talk religion on network TV. It makes too many people angry. You can talk about sex."

"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]"

"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."

"There is more than one way to burn a book. And the world is full of people running about with lit matches."