#censor

Poets have to be sensitive to their audience, but it does not mean that they censor themselves. I realise my audience is diverse. Some will read with empathy and curiosity while others will take offense. ↗

— John Barton

#censor #curiosity #diverse #does #empathy

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

#education #free-speech #paraphrased #death

There must be something in books, something we can’t imagine, to make a woman stay in a burning house; there must be something there. You don’t stay for nothing. ↗

— Ray Bradbury

#censorship #imagination

For books are not absolutely dead things, but do contain a potency of life in them to be as active as that soul was whose progeny they are; nay, they do preserve as in a vial the purest efficacy and extraction of that living intellect that bred them. ↗

— John Milton

#censorship #ideas #intellect #life

It is not necessary to conceal anything from a public insensible to contradiction and narcotized by technological diversions. ↗

— Neil Postman

#independent-thought #technology-addiction #thinking #age

The real heroes are the librarians and teachers who at no small risk to themselves refuse to lie down and play dead for censors. ↗

— Bruce Coville

#heroes #librarians #teachers #teacher

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

#fahrenheit- #technology

The burning of a book is a sad, sad sight, for even though a book is nothing but ink and paper, it feels as if the ideas contained in the book are disappearing as the pages turn to ashes and the cover and binding--which is the term for the stitching and glue that holds the pages together--blacken and curl as the flames do their wicked work. When someone is burning a book, they are showing utter contempt for all of the thinking that produced its ideas, all of the labor that went into its words and sentences, and all of the trouble that befell the author . . . ↗

— Lemony Snicket

#censorship #work

There are worse crimes than burning books. One of them is not reading them. ↗

— Joseph Brodsky

#censorship #illiteracy #reading #read

All censorships exist to prevent anyone from challenging current conceptions and existing institutions. All progress is initiated by challenging current conceptions, and executed by supplanting existing institutions. Consequently, the first condition of progress is the removal of censorship. ↗

— George Bernard Shaw

#free-speech #progress #challenge