He who destroys a good book kills reason itself. — John Milton
Censorship is telling a man he can't have a steak just because a baby can't chew it. — Mark Twain
There comes a point in your life when you need to stop reading other people's book and write your own.
All censorships exist to prevent anyone from challenging current conceptions and existing institutions. — George Bernard Shaw
Censorship reflects a society's lack of confidence in itself. It is a hallmark of an authoritarian regime. — Potter Stewart
There is more than one way to burn a book. — Ray Bradbury
There comes a day when you realize turning the page is the best feeling in the world, because you realize there is so much more to the book than the page you were stuck on.
The abuse dies in a day; but the denial slays the life of the people and entombs the hope of the race. — Charles Bradlaugh
If in other lands the press and books and literature of all kinds are censored, we must redouble our efforts here to keep them free — Franklin D. Roosevelt
Libraries should be open to all - except the censor. — John F. Kennedy
When a library expels a book of mine and leaves an unexpurgated Bible lying around where unprotected youth and age can get hold of it, the deep unconscious irony of it delights me and doesn't anger me. — Mark Twain
Censorship Quotes
Whoever would overthrow the liberty of a nation must begin by subduing the freeness of speech. — Benjamin Franklin
The first thing dictators do is finish free press, to establish censorship. There is no doubt that a free press is the first enemy of dictatorship. — Fidel Castro
Political correctness is neither political nor is it correct. It amounts to social censorship, and the sooner we spit it out, the better. — Jeff Cooper
Each time you read a book, a tree smiles knowing there's life after death.
Our liberty depends on the freedom of the press, and that cannot be limited without being lost. — Thomas Jefferson
Freedom of the press is not just important to democracy, it is democracy. — Walter Cronkite
Once a government is committed to the principle of silencing the voice of opposition, it has only one way to go, and that is down the path of increasingly repressive measures, until it becomes a source of terror to all its citizens and creates a country where everyone lives in fear. — Harry S. Truman
The book to read is not the one that thinks for you but the one which makes you think.
There is little value in insuring the survival of our nation if our traditions do not survive with it. And there is very grave danger that an announced need for increased security will be seized upon by those anxious to expand its meaning to the very limits of official censorship and concealment. — John F. Kennedy
When you tear out a man's tongue, you are not proving him a liar, you're only telling the world that you fear what he might say. — George R. R. Martin
The paper burns, but the words fly away. — Rabbi Akiva
Censorship only perpetuates ignorance and prevents the open exchange of ideas. — Bret Weinstein
Self Censorship Quotes
Self-censorship is insulting to the self. Timidity is a hopeless way forward. — Ai Weiwei
Self-censorship, the most important and most successful form of censorship, is rampant. Debate is identified with dissent, which is in turn identified with disloyalty. There is a widespread feeling that, in this new, open-ended emergency, we may not be able to 'afford' our traditional freedoms. — Susan Sontag
SeLF censorsHIP?
Not my strong suit...I dont want to be a total d o u c h e b a g , but a little bit of one. — Misha Collins
You dont have to burn books to destroy a culture. Just get people to stop reading them.
But poets were not considered dangerous and they were advised to exercise self-censorship. At most, poets were requested not to write at all. I took advantage of this negative liberty. — Eugenio Montale
The worst evil is - and that's the product of censorship - is the self-censorship, because that twists spines, that destroys my character because I have to think something else and say something else, I have to always control myself. — Milos Forman
I think the enemy is self-censorship. In a free society the biggest danger is that you're afraid to the point where you censor yourself. — Tim Robbins
I went away in my head, into a book.
Censorship is the commonest social blasphemy because it is mostly concealed, built into us by indolence, self-interest and cowardice. — John Osborne
Self-censorship is a lie to yourself; if you are going to be trying to seriously create art, to create literary art, and you decide to hold back, to censor yourself, then you are a fool to yourself and it would be better that you kept your mouth shut and did not speak. — Salman Rushdie
And yet on the other hand unless warinesse be us'd, as good almost kill a Man as kill a good Book; who kills a Man kills a reasonable creature, Gods Image, but hee who destroyes a good Booke, kills reason it selfe, kills the Image of God, as it were in the eye. — John Milton
You should not be subjected to the pressures, the intimidation, whether by Government or by the private sector, which would force you into self-censorship. — Alfred-Maurice de Zayas
Banned Books Quotes
The Koran is a fascist book which incites violence. That is why this book, just like [Adolf Hitler's] Mein Kampf, must be banned. — Geert Wilders
God forbid that any book should be banned. The practice is as indefensible as infanticide. — Rebecca West
You know what they say: When people start burning books they'll soon burn human beings. — Cornelia Funke
WIth freedom, books, flowers, and the moon, who could not be happy.
I don't want to be shut out from the truth. If they ban books, they might as well lock us away from the world. — Rory Edwards
I always order the banned books from a black market dealer in California, figuring if the State of Mississippi banned them, they must be good. — Kathryn Stockett
Any book worth banning is a book worth reading. — Isaac Asimov
A book is a dream that you hold in your hand.
It hardly matters why a library is destroyed: every banning, curtailment, shredding, plunder or loot gives rise (at least as a ghostly presence) to a louder, clearer, more durable library of the banned, looted, plundered, shredded or curtailed. — Alberto Manguel
In addition, we were unable to meet openly to discuss the progress of the book, for we were both on the list of persons banned from communicating with other banned persons. — Ruth First
Religious fundamentalists in Bangladesh have always argued for a ban on my books. — Taslima Nasrin
Ideas are only lethal if you suppress and don't discuss them. Ignorance is not bliss, it's stupid. Banning books shows you don't trust your kids to think and you don't trust yourself to be able to talk to them. — Anna Quindlen
Censorship is telling a man he can't have a steak just because a baby can't chew it. — Mark Twain
Obscenity is not a quality inherent in a book or picture, but is solely and exclusively a contribution of the reading mind, and hence cannot be defined in terms of the qualities of a book or picture. — Theodore Schroeder
All censorships exist to prevent anyone from challenging current conceptions and existing institutions. — George Bernard Shaw
Books of apostates, heretics, schismatics, and all other writers defending heresy or schism or in any attacking the foundations of religion, are altogether prohibited. — Pope Leo XIII
Censorship reflects a society's lack of confidence in itself. It is a hallmark of an authoritarian regime. — Potter Stewart
To limit the press is to insult a nation; to prohibit reading of certain books is to declare the inhabitants to be either fools or slaves: such a prohibition ought to fill them with disdain. — Claude Adrien Helvetius
The abuse dies in a day; but the denial slays the life of the people and entombs the hope of the race. — Charles Bradlaugh
People die, but books never die. — Franklin D. Roosevelt
If in other lands the press and books and literature of all kinds are censored, we must redouble our efforts here to keep them free — Franklin D. Roosevelt
Libraries should be open to all - except the censor. — John F. Kennedy
When a library expels a book of mine and leaves an unexpurgated Bible lying around where unprotected youth and age can get hold of it, the deep unconscious irony of it delights me and doesn't anger me. — Mark Twain
Yes, books are dangerous. They should be dangerous - they contain ideas. — Pete Hautman
It is quite reasonable to subscribe both to the old saw that no good girl was ever ruined by a book and to the perception that it is not good for children to be constantly exposed to the sexual violence in our popular culture. Protecting children seems to me logically, legally, and rather easily differentiated from censorship. — Molly Ivins
Censorship is never over for those who have experienced it. It is a brand on the imagination that affects the individual who has suffered it, forever. — Noam Chomsky
Censorship is the child of fear and the father of ignorance. — Laurie Halse Anderson
There's more than one way to be a girl — Lauren Faust
Better a thousandfold abuse of free speech than denial of free speech. — Charles Bradlaugh
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. — Ray Bradbury
Let us welcome controversial books and controversial authors. — John F. Kennedy
Banning books is just another form of bullying. It's all about fear and an assumption of power. The key is to address the fear and deny the power. — James Howe
People die, but books never die. No man and no force can abolish memory. — Franklin D. Roosevelt
Books are not absolutely dead things, but do contain a potency of life in them....I know they are as lively and as vigorously productive as those fabulous dragon's teeth and being sown up and down, may chance to spring up armed men. — John Milton
The source of better ideas is wisdom. The surest path to wisdom is a liberal education. — Alfred Whitney Griswold
All books can be indecent books, though recent books are bolder.
For filth, I'm glad to say, is in the mind of the beholder.
When correctly viewed, everything is lewd.
I could tell you things about Peter Pan
and the Wizard of OZ, there's a dirty old man! — Tom Lehrer
We all know that books burn, yet we have the greater knowledge that books cannot be killed by fire. People die, but books never die. No man and no force can put thought in a concentration camp forever. No man and no force can take from the world the books that embody man's eternal fight against tyranny of every kind. — Franklin D. Roosevelt
And yet on the other hand unless warinesse be us'd, as good almost kill a Man as kill a good Book; who kills a Man kills a reasonable creature, Gods Image, but hee who destroyes a good Booke, kills reason it selfe, kills the Image of God, as it were in the eye. — John Milton
Fear is often disguised as moral outrage. — Judy Blume
Kids tell me all the time, "I don't know how you do it, but that's us in the book." That's the kind of response you want, and I can't sacrifice it for the sake of somebody worried about censorship. You have to find a way to be truthful and honest. — Robert Cormier
I wrote 'Tom Sawyer' and 'Huck Finn' for adults exclusively, and it always distressed me when I find that boys and girls have been allowed access to them. The mind that becomes soiled in youth can never again be washed clean. — Mark Twain
Censorship ends in logical completeness when nobody is allowed to read any books except the books that nobody reads. — George Bernard Shaw
I can remember in my adolescence feeling that many of the things that were hurtful and hypocritical in society were things related to sex. They included the kind of censorship laws that existed in the movies and books when I was young. — Hugh Hefner
It's magical thinking to imagine that the reason unspeakable things are being perpetrated by younger and younger people is that they've fallen under the influence of seductive, lascivious, prurient, and violent material in books, films, television. A great deal of this type of censorship has to do with absolving parents of responsibility - parents who just plop their kids in front of the television and leave them there hour upon hour. — John Irving
There are always forces at work in a society, which are really forces of censorship - either religious bodies or zealots who are always putting pressure on things, whether it's books or art or film. — John Boorman
In this age of censorship, I mourn the loss of books that will never be written, I mourn the voices that will be silenced-writers' voices, teachers' voices, students' voices-and all because of fear. — Judy Blume
When you publish a book, you do so in part to end the silence. All censorship is silence. I would never, as an author, feel right requiring a young person whose family would object to the book to read it. Just as I would never force that person to read it, I would ask those folks to not force others not to read it. To me, that is just good manners. — Stephen Chbosky
A book is somehow sacred. A dictator can kill and maim people, can sink to any kind of tyranny and only be hated, but when books are burned the ultimate in tyranny has happened. This we cannot forgive. — John Steinbeck
Without any censorship, in the West fashionable trends of thought and ideas are carefully separated from those which are not fashionable; nothing is forbidden, but what is not fashionable will hardly ever find its way into periodicals or books or be heard in colleges. Legally your researchers are free, but they are conditioned by the fashion of the day. — Aleksandr Solzhenitsyn
Censoring books that deal with difficult, adolescent issues does not protect anybody. Quite the opposite. It leaves kids in the darkness and makes them vulnerable. Censorship is the child of fear and the father of ignorance. Our children cannot afford to have the truth of the world withheld from them — Laurie Halse Anderson
In Conclusion
Which quotation resonated with you best? Did you enjoy our collection of censorship in books quotes? Or may be you have a slogan about censorship in books to suggest. Let us know using our contact form.
Citation
Feel free to cite and use any of the quotes in this collection of censorship in books quotations. For popular citation styles(APA, Chicago, MLA), please use this citation page.
