#censors

As to the evil which results from a censorship, it is impossible to measure it, for it is impossible to tell where it ends. ↗

— Jeremy Bentham

#ends #evil #impossible #measure #results

I like solitude. It is when you truly hear and speak your natural, unadulterated mind, and out comes your most stupid self as well as your most intelligent self. It is when you realize who you are and the extents of the good and the evils which you are capable of. ↗

— Criss Jami

#censorship #evil #extensive #extremes #good

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

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

It was a pleasure to burn. It was a special pleasure to see things eaten, to see things blackened and changed. With the brass nozzle in his fists, with this great python spitting its venomous kerosene upon the world, the blood pounded in his head, and his hands were the hands of some amazing conductor playing all the symphonies of blazing and burning to bring down the tatters and charcoal ruins of history. With his symbolic helmet numbered 451 on his stolid head, and his eyes all orange flame with the thought of what came next, he flicked the igniter and the house jumped up in a gorging fire that burned the evening sky red and yellow and black. He strode in a swarm of fireflies. He wanted above all, like the old joke, to shove a marshmallow on a stick in the furnace, while the flapping pigeon-winged books died on the porch and lawn of the house. While the books went up in sparkling whirls and blew away on a wind turned dark with burning. ↗

— Ray Bradbury

#censorship #fire #change

It's harder to pick and choose when you're dead. It's like a photograph, you know. It doesn't matter as much. ↗

— Neil Gaiman

#death #death-and-dying #etiquette #perspective #self-censorship

Children deprived of words become school dropouts; dropouts deprived of hope behave delinquently. Amateur censors blame delinquency on reading immoral books and magazines, when in fact, the inability to read anything is the basic trouble. ↗

— Peter S. Jennison

#censorship #education #illiteracy #reading #education

Free societies...are societies in motion, and with motion comes tension, dissent, friction. Free people strike sparks, and those sparks are the best evidence of freedom's existence. ↗

— Salman Rushdie

#freedom #freedom

Religion grants its adherents malign, intoxicating and morally corrosive sensations. Destroying intellectual freedom is always evil, but only religion makes doing evil feel quite so good. ↗

— Philip Pullman

#evil #first-amendment #freedom #freedom-of-speech #hubris

Where they have burned books, they will end in burning human beings. ↗

— Heinrich Heine

#censorship #censorship