Thursday, August 19, 2010

On a lighter note...

...here are a few quotes about censorship that should bring a smile to your face even if the topic is not one normally recognized as smile-inducing. Enjoy!

“Censorship ends in logical completeness when nobody is allowed to read any books except the books that nobody reads.” – George Bernard Shaw

“Censorship is telling a man he can’t have a steak just because a baby can’t chew it.” – Mark Twain

“An idea that is not dangerous is unworthy of being called an idea at all.” – Oscar Wilde

“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

“Everyone is in favor of free speech. Hardly a day passes without its being extolled, but some people’s idea of it is that they are free to say what they like, but if anyone else says anything back, that is an outrage.”
–Winston Churchill

“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, message to Congress, August 8, 1950

“We are not afraid to entrust the American people with unpleasent facts, foreign ideas, alien philosophies, and competitive values. For a nation that is afraid to let its people judge the truth and falsehood in an open market is a nation that is afraid of its people.”
– John F. Kennedy. Remarks made on the 20th anniversary of the Voice of America at H.E.W. Auditorium, February 26, 1962

“Don’t join the book burners. Don’t think you are going to conceal thoughts by concealing evidence that they ever existed.” – Dwight D. Eisenhower, speech at Dartmouth College, June 14, 1953

“The dirtiest book of all is the expurgated book.” – Walt Whitman

Source: Certifiably Random

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