Erica Jong Quotes

Artists themselves are not confined, but their output is.

Literature should not be suppressed merely because it offends the moral code of the censor.

Listen, anybody who has a film festival has the right to show what they want.

In America we don’t apologize for opinions, that’s why we have a 1st Amendment. If we can’t discuss even controversial opinions in the pages of our newspapers, where are we going to do it?

I do not want to see censorship, yet I don't believe a dime of taxpayer money should go into art that is clearly and visibly filth.

For better or worse, we are the Court of Appeals for the Hollywood Circuit. Millions of people toil in the shadow of the law we make, and much of their livelihood is made possible by the existence of intellectual property rights. But much of their livelihood - and much of the vibrancy of our culture - also depends on the existence of other intangible rights: The right to draw ideas from a rich and varied public domain, and the right to mock, for profit as well as fun, the cultural icons of our time.

In the end, censoring a comedian's jokes is on par with censoring 'Huckleberry Finn.' Now, I'm not comparing myself to Mark Twain - he had much wavier hair and a slightly thicker mustache. But when you deny an artist the chance to explore his art, you're forcing your beliefs on him.

Art is where we make a stand. If we don't make it there, freedom of expression is lost for everyone - for artists, for journalists, and for everyday people.

It is the freedom to blaspheme, to transgress, to move beyond the pale, that is at the heart of all intellectual, artistic and political endeavor. Far from censoring offensive speech, a vibrant and diverse society should encourage it. In any society that is not uniform, grey and homogeneous, there are bound to be clashes of viewpoints.

We must defend freedom of expression and if I had to chose, I prefer the excess of caricature over the excess of censure.

An artist in my view is always afraid of extremists; he is always afraid of those who claim to have found the ultimate solution to any question.

Obscenity is a notable enhancer of life and is suppressed at grave peril to the arts.

What is freedom of expression? Without the freedom to offend, it ceases to exist. Without the freedom to challenge, even to satirize all orthodoxies, it ceases to exist. Language and the imagination cannot be imprisoned, or art will die, and with it, a little of what makes us human.

Freedom of expression is a very essential condition for me to make any art. Also, it is an essential value for my life. I have to protect this right and also to fight for the possibility.

No art ever survived censorship; no art ever will.

I understand that people are afraid. Because I think censorship is about fear. It's just fear being projected onto art.

Art is about freedom of expression, and should not be molded to fit any propaganda or lofty ideal.

Without freedom of expression, good taste means nothing.

What I'm very upset about is the attempt to dictate to museums what they show, and the statements made by politicians in Washington that have curtailed the freedom of the National Endowment for the Arts. The attention to those issues is deflected by the spin of my supposedly having trivialized the Holocaust.

I'm not for gratuitous nudity, but if there's humor, I don't have a problem.

Marks on paper are free - free speech - press - pictures all go together I suppose.

Nothing is harmful to literature except censorship, and that almost never stops literature going where it wants to go either, because literature has a way of surpassing everything that blocks it and growing stronger for the exercise.

Censorship is the thing that stops you doing what you want to do, and what writers want to talk about is what they do, not what stops them doing it.

Who is more to be pitied, a writer bound and gagged by policemen or one living in perfect freedom who has nothing more to say?

Everybody favours free speech in the slack moments when no axes are being ground.