Abhijit Banerjee Quotes

I find it very offensive when the government tells me what I can and cannot watch. Censor yourself.

It is the absolute right of the State to supervise the formation of public opinion.

If one seeks to disseminate his ideas by means of periodicals or pamphlets, the post-office officials may decline to transmit anything that does not suit their taste; and the courts have decided that the United States post-office has precisely the same right to refuse to carry The Masses that it has to exclude sulfuric acid and dynamite from the mails.

The ultimate censorship is the flick of the dial.

If you care for the quality of life in our American democracy, then you have to be for censorship.

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.

Free speech rights means that government officials are barred from creating lists of approved and disapproved political ideas and then using the power of the state to enforce those preferences.

There was no censorship of the press: in general, the War Measures Act could have been made even more radical.

In America you can say anything you want - as long as it doesn't have any effect.

We have an open society. No one will come and take me away for saying what I am saying. But they don't have to, if they can control how many people hear it. And that's how they do it.

Do we really want the FCC to conduct investigations and issue warnings to radio talk show hosts nationwide who simply discuss the important issues of our time? The Constitution says 'freedom of speech,' not 'freedom of government-approved fair speech in rationed amounts.'

Free speech is meant to protect unpopular speech. Popular speech, by definition, needs no protection.

I worry about censorship in many parts of the world.

I can only assume that your editorial writer tripped over the First Amendment and thought it was the office cat.

We should be eternally vigilant against attempts to check the expression of opinions that we loathe and believe to be fraught with death, unless they so imminently threaten immediate interference with the lawful and pressing purposes of the law that an immediate check is required to save the country.

Every society has a right to preserve public peace and order, and therefore has a good right to prohibit the propagation of opinions which have a dangerous tendency.

The marketing department of any given publishing house has far more power over free expression in America than any government office.

The ministry of interior may censor newspapers and ban them if they include anything that violates public security, threatens national unity, or contradicts Islam.

The government may not prohibit expression simply because it disagrees with its message.

Censorship has had a long history in the western world. Book banning is as old as books.

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 ...

If you don't think a television news show represents the truth, you can turn off your TV. If you don't think a magazine represents the truth, you can cancel your subscription. You have the right to expose yourself to whatever information you want. But to have the government prescribing what the truth is or limiting the information available for the citizen is contrary to the 1st Amendment.

Where there is official censorship it is a sign that speech is serious.

The state must not ... let itself be confused by the drivel about so-called "freedom of the press," ... it must make sure of this instrument of popular education, and place it in the service of the state.

If the 1st Amendment means anything, it means that the state has no business telling a man, sitting alone in his own house, what books he may read or what films he may watch.