BBW – Quotes About Censorship
Oct
3
2007

CONGRESS SHALL MAKE NO LAW RESPECTING AN ESTABLISHMENT OF RELIGION, OR PROHIBITING THE FREE EXERCISE THEREOF; OR ABRIDGING THE FREEDOM OF SPEECH, OR OF THE PRESS; OR THE RIGHT OF THE PEOPLE PEACEABLY TO ASSEMBLE, AND TO PETITION THE GOVERNMENT FOR A REDRESS OF GRIEVANCES.

The Bill of Rights to the U.S. Constitution was ratified on December 15, 1791

So this morning I’ve been looking around the internet at articles on book burning and I’m slightly nauseated by the horrible similarity between pictures from book burnings in Nazi Germany and parking lots here in the US just two years ago so I’m going to do some quotes today…

“You have not converted a man because you have silenced him.”
John Morley

“You see these dictators on their pedestals, surrounded by the bayonets of their soldiers and the truncheons of their police. Yet in their hearts there is unspoken – unspeakable! – fear. They are afraid of words and thoughts! Words spoken abroad, thoughts stirring at home, all the more powerful because they are forbidden. These terrify them. A little mouse – a little tiny mouse! – of thought appears in the room, and even the mightiest potentates are thrown into panic.”

Winston Churchill

“Without free speech no search for truth is possible… no discovery of truth is useful… Better a thousandfold abuse of free speech than denial of free speech. The abuse dies in a day, but the denial slays the life of the people, and entombs the hope of the race.”
— Charles Bradlaugh

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

“Children deprived of words become school dropouts; dropouts deprived of hope behave delinquently. Amateur censors blame delinquency on reading immoral books and magazines, when in fact, the inability to read anything is the basic trouble.”
— Peter S. Jennison

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

“Censorship ends in logical completeness when nobody is allowed to read any books except the books that nobody reads.”
— George Bernard Shaw, Irish playwright and critic (1856-1950)

“All these people talk so eloquently about getting back to good old-fashioned values. Well, as an old poop I can remember back to when we had those old-fashioned values, and I say let’s get back to the good old-fashioned First Amendment of the good old-fashioned Constitution of the United States — and to hell with the censors! Give me knowledge or give me death!”
— Kurt Vonnegut, author

2 comments to “BBW – Quotes About Censorship”

  1. Lori
    October 3rd, 2007 at 1:46 pm · Link

    Clapping.



  2. N.J. Walters
    October 4th, 2007 at 4:23 am · Link

    Great quotes and all very true.