"A censor is a man who knows more than he thinks you ought to."
-- Laurence Peter, professor of education, 1977
"Our Constitution was not intended to be used by...any group to foist its personal religious beliefs on the rest of us."
--Katherine Hepburn
"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, author
"Everyone is in favor of free speech. Hardly a day passes without its being extolled, but some people's idea of it is that they are free to say what they like, but if anyone else says anything back, that is an outrage."
--Winston Churchill
"[O]ne man's vulgarity is another's lyric."
-- John Marshall Harlan, Supreme Court justice, 1971
"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
"The books that the world calls immoral are the books that show the world its own shame."
--Oscar Wilde
"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, Preface to Mrs. Warren's Profession
"Every dogma has its day, but ideals are eternal."
--Israel Zangwill
"Once a government is committed to the principle of silencing the voice of opposition, it has only one way to go, and that is down the path of increasingly repressive measures, until it becomes a source of terror to all its citizens and creates a country where everyone lives in fear."
-- Harry S. Truman, message to Congress, August 8, 1950
"In the long run of history, the censor and the inquisitor have always lost. The only sure weapon against bad ideas is better ideas. The source of better ideas is wisdom."
-- Alfred Whitney Griswold, Essays on Education
"We are not afraid to entrust the American people with unpleasent facts, foreign ideas, alien philosophies, and competitive values. For a nation that is afraid to let its people judge the truth and falsehood in an open market is a nation that is afraid of its people."
-- John F. Kennedy. Remarks made on the 20th anniversary of the Voice of America at H.E.W. Auditorium, February 26, 1962