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The burning of an author’s books, imprisonment for opinion’s sake, has always been the tribute that an ignorant age pays to the genius of its time.more Joseph Allen quotes |
The artist, viewing his fellows through his personal vision, has through the ages attempted to portray what he sees and to present his understanding of it. Censorship in his case has perpetrated heavy and sometimes reprehensible blunders.more Hollis Alpert quotes |
The intellectually stifling results of censorship -- while deplorable in any setting -- would be all the more abominable if allowed to exist within the college environment.more William M. Anderson, Jr. quotes |
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There are 100,000 total marijuana smokers in the US, and most are Negroes, Hispanics, Filipinos and entertainers. Their Satanic music, jazz and swing, result from marijuana usage. This marijuana causes white women to seek sexual relations with Negroes, entertainers and any others.more Harry J. Anslinger quotes |
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A forbidden writing is thought to be a certain spark of truth, that flies up in the face of them who seek to tread it out.more Sir Francis Bacon quotes |
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Political correctness is really a subjective list put together by the few to rule the many -- a list of things one must think, say, or do. It affronts the right of the individual to establish his or her own beliefs.more Mark Berley quotes |
All forms of tampering with human beings, getting at them, shaping them against their will to your own pattern, all thought control and conditioning is, therefore, a denial of that in men which makes them men and their values ultimate.more Isaiah Berlin quotes |
Let us revise our views and work from the premise that all laws should be for the welfare of society as a whole and not directed at the punishment of sins.more John Biggs, Jr. quotes |
What finally emerges from the ‘clear and present danger’ cases is a working principle that the substantive evil must be extremely serious and the degree of imminence extremely high before utterances can be punished…It must be taken as a command of the broadest scope that explicit language, read in the context of a liberty-loving society, will allow.more Justice Hugo L. Black quotes |
Freedom of the mind requires not only, or not even especially, the absence of legal constraints but the presence of alternative thoughts. The most successful tyranny is not the one that uses force to assure uniformity, but the one that removes awareness of other possibilities.more Alan Bloom quotes |
No more fatuous chimera has ever infested the brain than that you can control opinions by law or direct belief by statute, and no more pernicious sentiment ever tormented the heart than the barbarous desire to do so. The field of inquiry should remain open, and the right of debate must be regarded as a sacred right.more William E. Borah quotes |
Marijuana never kicks down your door in the middle of the night. Marijuana never locks up sick and dying people, does not suppress medical research, does not peek in bedroom windows. Even if one takes every reefer madness allegation of the prohibitionists at face value, marijuana prohibition has done far more harm to far more people than marijuana ever could.more William F. Buckley, Jr. quotes |
Marihuana is a more dangerous drug than heroin or cocaine. I am surprised to learn that certain police officers have been inclined to minimize the effects of the use of marihuana. They would, I am sure, be convinced that the drug is adhering to its Old World traditions of murder, assault, rape, physical demoralization, and mental breakdown. A study of the effects of marihuana shows clearly that it is a dangerous drug, and Bureau records prove that its use is associated with insanity and crime.more Bulletin of the FBI quotes |
Let us never tolerate outrageous conspiracy theories concerning the attacks of September the 11th; malicious lies that attempt to shift the blame away from the terrorists, themselves, away from the guilty.more George W. Bush quotes |
When I sell liquor, it's called bootlegging; when my patrons serve it on Lake Shore Drive, it's called hospitality.more Al Capone quotes |
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When we got organized as a country and we wrote a fairly radical Constitution with a radical Bill of Rights, giving a radical amount of individual freedom to Americans, it was assumed that the Americans who had that freedom would use it responsibly.... [However, now] there's a lot of irresponsibility. And so a lot of people say there's too much freedom. When personal freedom's being abused, you have to move to limit it.more Bill Clinton quotes |
Censorship always defeats its own purpose, for it creates, in the end, the kind of society that is incapable of exercising real discretion... In the long run it will create a generation incapable of appreciating the difference between independence of thought and subservience.more Henry Steele Commager quotes |
One of the problems that the marijuana reform movement consistently faces is that everyone wants to talk about what marijuana does, but no one ever wants to look at what marijuana prohibition does. Marijuana never kicks down your door in the middle of the night. Marijuana never locks up sick and dying people, does not suppress medical research, does not peek in bedroom windows. Even if one takes every reefer madness allegation of the prohibitionists at face value, marijuana prohibition has done far more harm to far more people than marijuana ever could.more Richard Cowan quotes |
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After fifty years as a Prohibitionist, I am more convinced than ever that we need a good party, not just good men and good women. Most public officials are united in the war against terrorism. They, like we, are outraged at the deaths of some 3,000 Americans on September 11. Yet, most are willing to give unqualified support to the traffic in liquor and tobacco in exchange for campaign cash. Those products jointly claim at least 600,000 American lives each year. Two hundred die each year from use of alcohol and tobacco for every one who died in the September 11 attacks. Need another reason for being a Prohibitionist?more Earl F. Dodge quotes |
An unexamined idea, to paraphrase Socrates, is not worth having and a society whose ideas are never explored for possible error may eventually find its foundations insecure.more Mark Van Doren quotes |
The First and Fourteenth Amendments say that Congress and the States shall make “no law” which abridges freedom of speech or of the press. In order to sanction a system of censorship I would have to say that “no law” does not mean what it says, that “no law” is qualified to mean “some” laws. I cannot take this step.more William O. Douglas quotes |
When books are challenged, restricted, removed, or banned, an atmosphere of suppression exists…. The fear of the consequences of censorship is as damaging as, or perhaps more damaging than, the actual censorship attempt. After all, when a published work is banned, it can usually be found elsewhere. Unexpressed ideas, unpublished works, unpurchased books are lost forever.more Robert P. Doyle quotes |
The prestige of government has undoubtedly been lowered considerably by the Prohibition law. For nothing is more destructive of respect for the government and the law of the land than passing laws which cannot be enforced. It is an open secret that the dangerous increase of crime in this country is closely connected with this.more Albert Einstein quotes |
Suppression of expression conceals the real problems confronting a society and diverts public attention from the critical issues. It is likely to result in neglect of the grievances which are the actual basis of the unrest, and this prevent their correction.more Thomas I. Emerson quotes |
Every man – in the development of his own personality – has the right to form his own beliefs and opinions. Hence, suppression of belief, opinion and expression is an affront to the dignity of man, a negation of man’s essential nature.more Thomas I. Emerson quotes |
The Right of all members of society to form their own beliefs and communicate them freely to others must be regarded as an essential principle of a democratically organized society.more Thomas I. Emerson quotes |
Censorship is a dangerous tool that is primarily used to suppress from those who would challenge oppression by the society and that state, and particularly victimizes minorities. [It] can never eliminate evil ideas, and so the best answer to bad speech is more speech.more Feminists Against Censorship quotes |
Every attempt to gag the free expression of thought is an unsocial act against society. That is why judges and juries who try to enforce such laws make themselves ridiculous.more Jay Fox quotes |
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Tax limits, or fiscal constraints generally, can be expected to curb government's appetites to the extent that the utility function of governmental decision makers contains arguments for privately enjoyable 'creature comforts,' for final end items of consumption. Such constraints become much less effective, and may well be evaded, if the motive force behind governmental action is 'do-goodism.' The licentious sinners we can control; the saintly ascetics may destroy us.more Geoffrey Brennan and James M. Buchanan quotes |
It is not the business of government to make men virtuous or religious, or to preserve the fool from the consequences of his own folly. Government should be repressive no further than is necessary to secure liberty by protecting the equal rights of each from aggression on the part of others, and the moment governmental prohibitions extend beyond this line they are in danger of defeating the very ends they are intended to serve.more Henry George quotes |
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