Mahatma Gandhi Quotes

It's not that, living in Pakistan, I feel an enormous constraint on how I can write and what I can say; rather, I recognize that one has to navigate these things... Am I aware of things that one could say that would be risky or that could be dangerous? Certainly I'm aware of those things.

Literature is doomed if liberty of thought perishes.

When I started to write, it was the '70s, and throughout that decade, we didn't have any problems with book challenges or censorship.

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?

If printers (publishers) only printed that which everyone liked, there would be very little printed

It's obvious that I come down on the side of free speech for anybody's work.

What cannot be said above all must not be silenced but written.

Freedom of expression must be considered sacred and thought can only be corrected by counter thought.

I thought [books ban] was crazy. Really my thoughts were "This is America, we don't do this here" but of course I know a lot better now. And I wasn't the only one. Norma Klein was writing at the same time. Her books were going. So many of us. When you say to me, no you can't do this I say, oh yes I can.

Today in many western countries, nobody dares question the Holocaust whose nature is questionable. According to the reports I have received, in America if people decide to write something against homosexuality on the basis of psychological and sociological principles, they will be prevented from publishing their work. How is it that these people feel obligated to respect freedom of expression?

It is our attitude toward free thought and free expression that will determine our fate. There must be no limit on the range of temperate discussion, no limits on thought. No subject must be taboo. No censor must preside at our assemblies.

To curtail free expression strikes twice at intellectual freedom, for whoever deprives another of the right to state unpopular views necessarily deprives others of the right to listen to those views.

When another writer in another house is not free, no writer is free.

The ultimate censorship is the flick of the dial.

People demand freedom of speech as a compensation for the freedom of thought which they seldom use.

That is my major concern: writers who are in prison for writing.

If we don't believe in freedom of expression for people we despise, we don't believe in it at all.

It's not just the books under fire now that worry me. It is the books that will never be written.

We should all have the opportunity to express what we want to express.

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.

The first condition of progress is the removal of censorship.

I shall stand for freedom of thought and expression in a place where it has been trampled and penalized.

Americans may not always live up to the Bill of Rights, but Americans do not ban books.

The nation that complacently and fearfully allows its artists and writers to become suspected rather than respected is no longer regarded as a nation possessed with humor or depth.

Freedom of speech and thought matters, especially when it is speech and thought with which we disagree. The moment the majority decides to destroy people for engaging in thought it dislikes, thought crime becomes a reality.