Quotations on censorship

I am opposed to censorship. Censors are pretty sure fools. I have no confidence in the suppression of everyday facts.

-James Robinson

Damn all expurgated books; the dirtiest book of all is the expurgated book.

-Walt Whitman

Only the suppressed word is dangerous.

-Ludwig B�rne

Pontius Pilate was the first great censor, and Jesus Christ the first great victim of censorship.

-Ben Lindsay

Every burned book enlightens the world.

-Ralph Waldo Emerson

I am mortified to be told that, in the United States of America, the sale of a book can become a subject of inquiry, and of criminal inquiry too.

-Thomas Jefferson

He is always the severest censor of the merit of others who has the least worth of his own.

-Elias Lyman Maggon

As long as I don't write about the government, religion, politics, and other institutions, I am free to print anything.

-Beaumarchais

Censorship reflects a society's lack of confidence in itself.

-Potter Stewart

If there had been a censorship of the press in Rome we should have had today neither Horace nor Juvenal, nor the philosophical writings of Cicero.

-Voltaire