Dwight D. Eisenhower
Military Leader, Politician
"Don't join the book burners!"
Censorship quotes
Censorship
135 quotes on this topic — from poets, philosophers, and thinkers across history.
Gilbert K. Chesterton
Writer, Journalist
"We do not need a censorship of the press. We have a censorship by the press... It is not we who silence the press. It is the press who silences us."
Jay-Z
Rapper, Businessman
"We change people through conversation, not through censorship."
George Bernard Shaw
Playwright, Critic
"All censorships exist to prevent anyone from challenging current conceptions and existing institutions."
Ralph Waldo Emerson
Essayist, Philosopher, Poet
"Every burned book enlightens the world."
Explore further
Topics related to Censorship
Browse quotes that often appear alongside censorship — connected by shared ideas and recurring themes.
Quote collection
Censorship quotes (page 1 of 7)
Follow a thought to its author, or read the full quote page.
"Censorship should never be allowed. One should be able to say anything. But I refuse to let politics be foisted on me."
Read quote
20 likes
"There is more than one way to burn a book."
Read quote
19 likes
"People die, but books never die."
Read quote
16 likes
"Censorship is the height of vanity."
Read quote
16 likes
"The first condition of progress is the removal of censorship."
Read quote
14 likes
"Censorship ends in logical completeness when nobody is allowed to read any books except the books that nobody can read."
Read quote
13 likes
"The interest in encouraging freedom of expression in a democratic society outweighs any theoretical but unproven benefit of censorship."
Read quote
12 likes
"We live in far too permissive a society. Never before has pornography been this rampant. And those films are so badly lit!"
Read quote
9 likes
"Assassination is the extreme form of censorship; and it seems hard to justify an incitement to it on anti-censorial principles."
Read quote
8 likes
"Art is never chaste. It ought to be forbidden to ignorant innocents, never allowed into contact with those not sufficiently prepared. Yes, art is dangerous. Where it is chaste, it is not art."
Read quote
7 likes
"The censorship of language is the censorship of consciousness."
Read quote
7 likes
"No member of a society has a right to teach any doctrine contrary to what the society holds to be true."
Read quote
7 likes
"Censorship is the mother of metaphor."
Read quote
7 likes
"Censorship is the tool of those who have the need to hide actualities from themselves and from others."
Read quote
6 likes
"I think you can leave the arts, superior or inferior, to the conscience of mankind."
Read quote
6 likes
"The press is easier to strangle than to look in the eyes."
Read quote
6 likes
"The function of the censor is to censor. He has a professional interest in finding things to suppress."
Read quote
6 likes
"Free speech not only lives, it rocks!"
Read quote
6 likes
"I believe in freedom of expression, I don't believe in censorship."
Read quote
5 likes
"Satires which the censor can understand are justly forbidden"
Read quote
5 likes