#censors

We Negro writers, just by being black, have been on the blacklist all our lives. Censorship for us begins at the color line. ↗

— Langston Hughes

#begins #being #black #censorship #color

I know that many writers have had to write under censorship and yet produced good novels; for instance, Cervantes wrote Don Quixote under Catholic censorship. ↗

— Guillermo Cabrera Infante

#censorship #cervantes #don quixote #good #had

The only place we were really told to tone it down - where other people would use the word censorship, but I wouldn't - was when we did MTV right after the Beavis and Butt-head thing. ↗

— Penn Jillette

#beavis #censorship #did #down #i

I used to think feminism was a liberating force - now I see many of those people are just censors under a different name. ↗

— Lydia Lunch

#different #feminism #force #i #i see

I suppose that writers should, in a way, feel flattered by the censorship laws. They show a primitive fear and dread at the fearful magic of print. ↗

— John Mortimer

#dread #fear #fearful #feel #flattered

Beyond all the other reasons not to do it, free speech assaults always backfire: they transform bigots into martyrs. ↗

— Glenn Greenwald

#censorship #freedom-of-speech #martyrdom #twitter #freedom

When society gives censors wide and vague powers they never confine themselves to deserving targets. They are not snipers, but machine-gunners. Allow them to fire at will, and they will hit anything that moves. ↗

— Nick Cohen

#free-speech #age

Censorship is the tool of those who have the need to hide actualities from themselves and from others. Their fear is only their inability to face what is real, and I can't vent any anger against them. I only feel this appalling sadness. Somewhere, in their upbringing, they were shielded against the total facts of our existence. They were only taught to look one way when many ways exist. ↗

— Charles Bukowski

#anger

How must it have felt, Pikes, the night they seized your films, like entrails yanked from the camera, out of your guts, clutching them in coils and wads to stuff them up a stove to burn away! Did it feel as bad as having some fifty thousand books annihilated with no recompense? Yes. Yes. Stendahl felt his hands grow cold with the senseless anger. ↗

— Ray Bradbury

#books #censorship #destruction #anger

As opposition leader, [Stephen Harper] wrote in the Montreal Gazette in the year before he came to power: 'Information is the lifeblood of a democracy. Without adequate access to key information about government policies and programs, citizens and parliamentarians cannot make informed decisions and incompetent or corrupt governments can be hidden under a cloak of secrecy.' When he became prime minister, his attitude appeared to undergo a shift of considerable proportions. It often took the Conservatives twice as long as previous governments to handle access requests. Sometimes it took six months to a year. ↗

— Lawrence Martin

#canada #canadian #canadian-government #canadian-politics #censorship