Eleanor Roosevelt Quotes

I think my first album opened a lot of doors for me to push the freedom of speech to the limit.

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.

One thing is sure — none of the arts flourishes on censorship and repression. And by this time it should be evident that the American public is capable of doing its own censoring. Certainly, the Thomas Committee is growing more ludicrous daily.

Political speech is indispensable to decision-making in a democracy, and this is no less true because the speech comes from a corporation. By taking the right to speak from some and giving it to others, the Government deprives the disadvantaged person or class of the right to use speech to strive to establish worth, standing, and respect for the speaker’s voice. The Government may not by these means deprive the public of the right and privilege to determine for itself what speech and speakers are worthy of consideration. The First Amendment protects speech and speaker, and the ideas that flow from each.

There shouldn't be any censorship on making a film.

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?

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

When people start yammering about artistic responsibility, artists become wary. The subtext of such talk is that the arts need to be regulated, which is to say censored.

Performers have the right to say what they want to, and anyone paying money has the right to accept or reject the art and entertainment that's available.

They still had the Lord Chamberlain, so we had this idiotic censorship. We were allowed three Jesus Christs instead of 10. Why three were OK, I don't know.

The notion of artistic responsibility begs questions with no satisfactory conclusions, the most inevitable and ineffectual being that we should just keep thinking and talking about it, given that the alternative - a governmental body monitoring the movies we make and see - is unacceptable.

The Libertarian position on the freedom of speech is a strong support of freedom of speech, and we oppose government intervention in controlling what is or is not moral.

I don't know that a political climate - as long as it's still a free country - makes much difference in the film world.

Widespread state control over art and culture has left no room for freedom of expression in the country. For more than 60 years, anyone with a dissenting opinion has been suppressed. Chinese art is merely a product: it avoids any meaningful engagement. There is no larger context. Its only purpose is to charm viewers with its ambiguity.

I personally think artists should criticize the government as much as possible since, unlike politicians, they do not have to obtain votes.

Censorship is the conscience of society.

The liberty of the press would be an empty sound, and no man would venture to write on any subject however pure his purpose, without an attorney at one elbow and a counsel at the other. From minds thus subdued by the fear of punishment, there could issue no works of genius to expand the empire of human reason, nor any masterly compositions on the general nature of governmetn ...

We do not fear censorship for we have no wish to offend with improprieties or obscenities, but we do demand, as a right, the liberty to show the dark side of wrong, that we may illuminate the bright side of virtue—the same liberty that is conceded to the art of the written word, that art to which we owe the Bible and the works of Shakespeare.

It would be a dangerous undertaking for persons trained only to the law to constitute themselves final judges of the worth of [a work], outside of the narrowest and most obvious limits. At the one extreme some works of genius would be sure to miss appreciation. Their very novelty would make them repulsive until the public had learned the new language in which their author spoke.

If an artist is going to take money from the taxpayers I guess he's got to be prepared to have the taxpayers dissatisfied with the product.

My paintings must burn that English artists might finally learn.

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.

Politically, the surest way to ward off authoritarianism is to safeguard the public expression of diverse opinion and the democratic interactions that result.

The censor is always quick to justify his function in terms that are protective of society. But the First Amendment, written in terms that are absolute, deprives the States of any power to pass on the value, the propriety, or the morality of a particular expression.

If the First Amendment guarantee of freedom of speech and press is to mean anything, it must allow protests even against the moral code that the standard of the day sets for the community.