William Wyler Quotes

The censor boards are mere redundant forces conspiring to keep the 'bold' films out of reach of the audience.

In a feature film, the question of censorship always comes up.

All my films were based on sensitive issues, and they were passed without any problems. I give full credit to the Censor Board for being capable enough to do their work well.

It's difficult to do a love scene in Indian cinema. The censors are sitting on top of your head.

Some of the most provocative TV that I'm inspired by is in the U.K. You guys take it for granted, but in America, we can't do it.

I love my country, but I believe that we are too quick to censor nudity.

When you do a film, when you do a television show, eventually someone comes along and will say to you, 'Don't say that because, one, you will offend someone, or, two, no one will get that. Someone's going to be confused by that, not get the reference and feel abandoned, and then they will get angry at the entertainment.'

Censors are energetic and righteous people but they just couldn't work a room like Abbe Lane.

The one thing that frustrates me more than anything else is that no studio has ever told me to tone down violence. They only ask you to make it more presentable.

These censorship people think something is going to promote behavior in people.

He asked me whether I had seen the movie 'The Color Purple.' I said no she hadn't. And Bobby said, 'Well, it's a terrible picture. They don't make good, decent, moral pictures nowadays.'

I've been involved with violent movies, and then I've also said at a certain point, 'I can't take it anymore. Please cut it.' You know, you've got to respect the filmmaker, and it's a really tough issue.

Ethics is a fluid term ...It's the standards by which a civilized society lives.

In deciding the ratings of the films, no consideration is given to artistic, technical or dramatic values. Only moral content is weighed.

Apropos of the agitation for abolishing the Censor in England, it occurred to me that not even the advocates of freedom seek to justify the free treatment of sexual matters in any other than a high moral-pointing vein. The notion that sexual themes might allowably be treated in the mere aim of amusement does not seem to have occurred to anybody at all.

If we should pass on whether or not a film is pornographic, we should take a look at it.

The world is governed much more by opinion than by laws. It is not the judgment of courts, but the moral judgment of individuals and masses of men, which is the wall of defense around property and life.

A film has to maintain a certain decorum in order to be broadcast to a vast audience.

There are stories you can tell on TV that can't be told in movies anymore.

It should be quite clear that it is possible for unpleasant people who are small in various ways other than in their artistic genius to produce great art. Art and morality have no necessary connection.

I have no issue with the CBFC.

It would be nice to think that a censor could allow a genuine work of artistic seriousness and ban a titillating piece of sadism, but it would take a miracle to make such a distinction stick.

a likeness different from the products of the God-fearing photographer.

The work of art may have a moral effect, but to demand moral purpose from the artist is to make him ruin his work.

Sir, I have seen your film and it is vulgar! Madame, my film rises below vulgarity.