This site is dedicated to the memory of Dr. Alan William Smolowe who gave birth to the creation of this database.
"The censor-moron does not really hate anything but the living and growing human consciousness." - D. H. Lawrence, fully David Herbert "D.H." Lawrence
"What is hard today is to censor one's own thoughts." - Arthur Waley
"Freedom is not only the absence of external restraints. It also is the absence of irresistible internal compulsions, unmanageable passions and uncensorable appetites. From the need to resist, manage and censor the passions there flows the need to do so in the interest of some ends rather than others. Hence freedom requires reflective choice about the ends of life." -
"Books won’t stay banned. They won’t burn. Ideas won’t go to jail. In the long run of history, the censor and the inquisitor have always lost. The only sure weapon against bad ideals is better ideas. The source of better ideas is wisdom. The surest path of wisdom is a liberal education." - Alfred Whitney Griswold
"Ideas won’t go to jail. In the long run of history, the censor and the inquisitor have always lost. The only sure weapon against bad ideas is better ideas." - Alfred Whitney Griswold
"Once you permit those who are convinced of their own superior rightness to censor and silence and suppress those who hold contrary opinions, just at that moment the citadel has been surrendered. For the American citadel is a man. Not man in general. Not man in the abstract. Not the majority of men. But man. That man. His worth. His uniqueness." - Archibald MacLeish
"Freedom is not only the absence of external restraints. It also is the absence of irresistible internal compulsions, unmanageable passions and uncensorable appetites. From the need to resist, manage and censor the passions there flows the need to do so in the interest of some ends rather than others. Hence freedom requires reflective choice about the ends of life." - George Frederick Will
"Censor the body and you censor breath and speech at the same time. Write yourself. Your body must be heard." - Hélène Cixous
"It is our attitude toward free thought and free expression that will determine our fate. There must be no limit on the range of temperate discussion, no limits on thought. No subject must be taboo. No censor must preside at our assemblies." - William O. Douglas, fully Judge William Orville Douglas
"Both the American people and nations that censor the internet should understand that our government is committed to helping promote internet freedom." - Hillary Rodham Clinton
"There's a hole in the world like a great black pit and the vermin of the world Inhabit it... And it goes by the name of London." - Stephen Sondheim, fully Stephen Joshua Sondheim
"Dispositions of the mind, like limbs of the body, acquire strength by exercise." - Thomas Jefferson
"This I hope will be the age of experiments in government, and that their basis will be founded in principles of honesty, not of mere force." - Thomas Jefferson
"It is all very well to talk about being the captain of your soul. It is hard, and only a few heroes, saints, and geniuses have been the captains of their souls for any extended period of their lives. Most men, after a little freedom, have preferred authority with the consoling assurances and the economy of effort which it brings." - Walter Lippmann
"Industry is a Christian obligation, imposed on our race to develop the noblest energies, and insures the highest reward." - Elias L. Magoon
"Providence has clearly ordained that the only path fit and salutary for man on earth is the path of persevering fortitude--the unremitting struggle of deliberate self-preparation and humble but active reliance on divine aid." - Elias L. Magoon