The idea of using censors to bar thoughts of sex is dangerous. A person without sex thoughts is abnormal.
Censorship Quotes
I am really mortified to be told that, in the United States of America, a fact like this can become a subject to inquiry, and of criminal inquiry, too, as an offense against religion; that a question about the sale of a book can be carried before the civil magistrate. Is this then our freedom […]
Senator Smoot (Republican, Ut.) Is planning a ban on smut. Oh rooti-ti-toot for Smoot of Ut. And his reverend occiput. Smite, Smoot, smite for Ut., Grit your molars and do your dut., Gird up your l–ns, Smite h-p and th-gh, We’ll all be Kansas By and by. Smite, Smoot, for the Watch and Ward, For […]
Any test that turns on what is offensive to the community’s standards is too loose, too capricious, too destructive of freedom of expression to be squared with the First Amendment. Under that test, juries can censor, suppress, and punish what they don’t like, provided the matter relates to “sexual impurity” or has a tendency “to […]
If M. de Becourt’s book be false in its facts, disprove them; if false in its reasoning, refute it. But, for God’s sake, let us freely hear both sides, if we choose.
It may be said that artist and censor differ in this wise: that the first is a decent mind in an indecent body and that the second is an indecent mind in a decent body.
Literature should not be suppressed merely because it offends the moral code of the censor.
I thought the work would be very innocent, and one which might be confined to the reason of any man; not likely to be much read if let alone, but, if persecuted, it will be vindication of his rights to buy, and to read what he pleases.
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 the shelf – that work I abhor – then you also have exactly the same right and so does everyone […]
Censorship is like an appendix. When inert, it is useless; when active it is extremely dangerous.
