What progress we are making. In the Middle Ages they would have burned me. Now they are content with burning my books.
—Sigmund Freud (1856–1939) Austrian Psychiatrist, Psychoanalytic
The whole principle [of censorship] is wrong. It’s like demanding that grown men live on skim milk because the baby can’t have steak.
—Robert A. Heinlein (1907–88) American Science Fiction Writer
Censure is willingly indulged, because it always implies some superiority: men please themselves with imagining that they have made a deeper search, or wider survey than others, and detected faults and follies which escape vulgar observation.
—Samuel Johnson (1709–84) British Essayist
The crime of book purging is that it involves a rejection of the word. For the word is never absolute truth, but only man’s frail and human effort to approach the truth. To reject the word is to reject the human search.
—Max Lerner (1902–92) Russian-born American Journalist
It is our attitude toward free thought and free expression that will determine our fate. There must be no limit on the range of temperate discussion, no limits on thought. No subject must be taboo. No censor must preside at our assemblies.
—William O. Douglas (1898–1980) American Judge
You do ill if you praise, but worse if you censure what you do not rightly understand.
—Leonardo da Vinci (1452–1519) Italian Polymath, Painter, Sculptor, Inventor, Architect
Fear of corrupting the mind of the younger generation is the loftiest of cowardice.
—Holbrook Jackson (1874–1948) British Journalist, Writer, Publisher
Art is never chaste. It ought to be forbidden to ignorant innocents, never allowed into contact with those not sufficiently prepared. Yes, art is dangerous. Where it is chaste, it is not art.
—Pablo Picasso (1881–1973) Spanish Painter, Sculptor, Artist
I am still against any kind of censorship. It’s a subject in my life that has been very important.
—Bernardo Bertolucci (1941–2018) Italian Film Director
Censorship is the height of vanity.
—Martha Graham (1894–1991) American Choreographer
Our liberty depends on the freedom of the press, and that cannot be limited without being lost
—Thomas Jefferson (1743–1826) American Head of State, Lawyer
The point is obvious. There is more than one way to burn a book. And the world is full of people running about with lit matches. Every minority, be it Baptist/Unitarian, Irish/Italian/Octogenarian/Zen Buddhist, Zionist/Seventhday Adventist, Women’s Lib/Republican, Mattachine/Four Square Gospel feels it has the will, the right, the duty to douse the kerosene, light the fuse. Every dimwit editor whosees himself as the source of all dreary blanc-mange plain porridge unleavened literature, licks his guillotine and eyes the neck of any author who dares to speak above a whisper or write above a nursery rhyme.
—Ray Bradbury (b.1920) American Novelist, Short Story Writer
Art made tongue-tied by authority.
—William Shakespeare (1564–1616) British Playwright
I think you can leave the arts, superior or inferior, to the conscience of mankind.
—William Butler Yeats (1865–1939) Irish Poet, Dramatist
Every burned book or house enlightens the world; every suppressed or expunged word reverberates through the earth from side to side.
—Ralph Waldo Emerson (1803–82) American Philosopher
When truth is no longer free, freedom is no longer real: the truths of the police are the truths of today.
—Jacques Prevert (1900–77) French Poet, Screenwriter
Censorship, like charity, should begin at home; but unlike charity, it should end there.
—Clare Boothe Luce (1903–87) American Playwright, Diplomat, Journalist, Diplomat, Elected Rep
It seems not more reasonable to leave the right of printing unrestrained, because writers may be afterwards censured, than it would be to sleep with doors unbolted, because by our laws we can hang a thief.
—Samuel Johnson (1709–84) British Essayist
The upshot was, my paintings must burn that English artists might finally learn.
—D. H. Lawrence (1885–1930) English Novelist, Playwright, Poet, Essayist, Literary Critic
Censure is the tax a man pays to the public for being eminent.
—Jonathan Swift (1667–1745) Irish Satirist
Few persons have sufficient wisdom to prefer censure, which is useful, to praise which deceives them.
—Francois de La Rochefoucauld (1613–80) French Writer
No government ought to be without censors; and where the press is free, no one ever will. Chance is the pseudonym of God when he did not want to sign.
—Anatole France (1844–1924) French Novelist
He who would acquire fame must not show himself afraid of censure. The dread of censure is the death of genius.
—William Gilmore Simms (1806–70) American Poet, Historian, Novelist, Editor
I find the pain of a little censure, even when it is unfounded, is more acute than the pleasure of much praise.
—Thomas Jefferson (1743–1826) American Head of State, Lawyer
I have sworn upon the altar of God eternal hostility against every form of tyranny over the mind of man.
—Thomas Jefferson (1743–1826) American Head of State, Lawyer
Freedom of the Press, if it means anything at all, means the freedom to criticize and oppose.
—George Orwell (1903–50) English Novelist, Journalist
If we can’t stamp out literature in the country, we can at least stop its being brought in from outside.
—Evelyn Waugh (1903–66) British Novelist, Essayist, Biographer
Censorship is advertising paid by the government.
—Federico Fellini (1920–93) Italian Filmmaker
If some books are deemed most baneful and their sale forbid, how, then, with deadlier facts, not dreams of doting men? Those whom books will hurt will not be proof against events. Events, not books, should be forbid.
—Herman Melville (1819–91) American Novelist, Short Story Writer, Essayist, Poet
Wherever they burn books they will also, in the end, burn human beings.
—Heinrich Heine (1797–1856) German Poet, Writer