Sleeping beauty awoke at the kiss of a scientist and expired at the fatal puncture of his syringe.

It’s red hot, mate. I hate to think of this sort of book getting in the wrong hands. As soon as I’ve finished this, I shall recommend they ban it.

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,...

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

When one writer tries to silence another, he silences every writer-and in the end he also silences himself.

Self-censorship is the most insidious form of censorship.

[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....

The moment you say that any idea system is sacred, whether it’s a religious belief system or a secular ideology, the moment you declare a set of ideas to be immune from criticism, satire, derision,...

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

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.

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...

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...

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...

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...

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...

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...

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...

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...

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,...

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...

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...

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...

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’...

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...

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...

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”...

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...

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.