The author determines that the bitterest struggles are for one side of the truth to the suppression of the other side.

I curse when I get really upset. Letting off steam that way makes me feel a little bit better. I’ve been through a lot, but I have never had the urge to go postal. I thank fuck for that.

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

They are always so quiet,” he said, turning to Papa. “So quiet.””They are not like those loud children people are raising these days, with no home training and no fear of God,” Papa said, and I was certain that it was pride that stretched Papa’s lips and lightened his eyes.”Imagine what the Standard would be...

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

[Blog post, March 10, 2014]

Libraries should be open to all – except the censor.[Response to questionnaire in Saturday Review, October 29 1960]

It is really exhausting to live in a dictatorship of ‘Me’, which is basically a tyranny of others.

Government censorship can slow down, but can’t reverse this trend.

La historia no ha cambiado. Hace mil anos ellos eran los duenos del mundo. Hoy en dia lo siguen siendo. Claro, lo tienen que compartir con los grandes magnates de la tierra, esos que controlan el petroleo, las drogas, la tecnologia y por supuesto la television y la radio. La Iglesia domina los miedos y...

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 censors don’t bother with fantasy books, especially old ones. They can’t understand them. They think it’s all kids’ stuff. They’d die if they knew what The Chronicles of Narnia were really about.

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,...

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...

Stopping leaks is a new form of censorship.

How must it have felt, Pikes, the night they seized your films, like entrails yanked from the camera, out of your guts, clutching them in coils and wads to stuff them up a stove to burn away! Did it feel as bad as having some fifty thousand books annihilated with no recompense? Yes. Yes. Stendahl...

The framers of the constitution knew human nature as well as we do. They too had lived in dangerous days; they too knew the suffocating influence of orthodoxy and standardized thought. They weighed the compulsions for restrained speech and thought against the abuses of liberty. They chose liberty.”[Beauharnais v.Illinois, 342 U.S. 250, 287 (1952) (dissenting)]

But you know, a wizard with black hair and a thick mustache put a curse on Moscow, and Petrograd, too, so that no one would be able to tell the truth without lying. If a novelist wrote a true story about how things really happened, no one would believe him, and he might even be...

The German Censors —— —— —— —— ———— —— —— —— —— —— —— —— —— ———— —— —— —— —— —— —— —— —— ———— —— —— —— —— —— —— —— —— ———— —— —— —— —— —— —— —— —— ———— —— —— —— —— —— —— —— —— ———— —— ——...

. . . I can see how the issue of exercising corporate control over users content is truly enraging here, on a site significantly made by these contributors. It’s unavoidable that we come to this, in my opinion (corporations always do), and GR/Amazon has all keys to the kingdom, but I can see why it’s...

I agree that it’s a shame some books have to suffer ratings that clearly are invalid. However I can’t think of a way to prevent it, and I didn’t see any ideas in the thread either (I did skim though). I hope you’ll appreciate that if we just start deleting ratings whenever we feel like...

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.

What is freedom of expression? Without the freedom to offend, it ceases to exist.

A society that gets rid of all its troublemakers goes downhill.

girl”? Shame on you! If nothing offends you, you’re a saint or you’re psychotic. If a few things offend you, deal with them–fairly. If you’re often offended by things, you’re probably a self-righteous asshole and it’s too bad you weren’t censored yourself–by your mother in an abortion clinic.

Isaac Deutscher was best known—like his compatriot Joseph Conrad—for learning English at a late age and becoming a prose master in it. But, when he writes above, about the ‘fact’ that millions of people ‘may’ conclude something, he commits a solecism in any language. Like many other critics, he judges Orwell’s Nineteen Eighty-Four not as...

All the papers that matter live off their advertisements, and the advertisers exercise an indirect censorship over news.

Be passionate about what you write, believe in your ability to convey timeless ideas, and let no one tell you what what you’re capable of.

All of us can think of a book… that we hope none of our children or any other children have taken off the shelf. But if I have the right to remove that book from the shelf – that work I abhor – then you also have exactly the same right and so does everyone...

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...

If the partridge didn’t call at the wrong moment, Neither the hunter nor the falcon would know of it. It follows from this point also, That everyone’s voice betrays him.

The crucifixion should never be depicted. It is a horror to be veiled.

The Motion Picture Association of America wipes the sweat off its brow and sings the PG-13 song.

Any book worth banning is a book worth reading.

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.

Jeg har aldri i mitt liv skrevet “slibrig”; men jeg kunne gi anvisning på dristigere ting i mine bøker enn hva som stod i den tyske fortelling. De er å finne f.eks. både i “Sult” og “Pan”. Men når Jacob Sverdrup leser over igjen disse steder og forarges, så vil jeg også be ham lese...

So yes, I say things I regret constantly, and I just can’t help it.

Have you ever gotten a bad review, Master Huud?””Hundreds of them.””Do they hurt?””Of course. But you get over it. Critics are just people, lad. They’re entitled to their opinions. They’re not the enemy.””Who is the enemy?””Censors.

It didn’t come from the Government down. There was no dictum, no declaration, no censorship, to start with, no! Technology, mass exploitation, and minority pressure carried the trick, thank God.

Freiheit ist immer die Freiheit des AndersdenkendenFreedom is always, and exclusively, freedom for the one who thinks differently.

You have to be mad in the language you’re mad in.

Censorship of anything, at any time, in any place, on whatever pretense, has always been and always will be the last resort of the boob and the bigot.

As the voices fall silent, the individuals who make up the amorphous and always changing community must decide for themselves, as they always have. I can’t write a coda because I can’t speak for others. I can only and ever speak for myself.

To be clear, Goodreads staff have not been deleting any posts. A value we’ve always had here is that we don’t censor content (unless it’s against our policies – eg porn, etc). [April 1, 2013]

The mind that becomes soiled in youth can never again be washed clean. I know this by my own experience, & to this day I cherish an unappeased bitterness against the unfaithful guardians of my young life, who not only permitted but compelled me to read an unexpurgated Bible through before I was 15 years...

The fact is that in any open society people constantly say things that other people don’t like. It’s completely normal that should happen. And in any confident, free society you just shrug it off and you proceed. There is no way of creating a free society where nobody says anything that others don’t like. If...

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.

People trying to force their agenda on my by deciding how I’m permitted to speak is offensive.

In short, whoever does violence to truth or its expression eventually mutilates justice, even though he thinks he is serving it. From this point of view, we shall deny to the very end that a press is true because it is revolutionary; it will be revolutionary only if it is true, and never otherwise.

At CBS, I’m in your house. I’m mindful of that. When I do standup, you’re in my home and I can say what I want to.