Floyd Abrams Quotes

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

I worry about censorship in many parts of the world.

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.

Censorship is definitely one of the main issues that you have to live with in China – period!

Censorship is a strange situation. There was times when people would burn books because they didn't like what people were doing.

The press is the enemy.

There's hardly any governmental censorship in Korea.

Routine is a declivity down which many governments slide, and routine says that freedom of the press is dangerous.

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

It's very difficult to have just a little bit of censorship.

I see the FCC responding to an already repressive society and raw censorship is the result.

Freedom of the press, printing, publication and mass media shall be guaranteed. Censorship on newspapers is forbidden as well as notifying, suspending or cancelling them by administrative methods. In a state of emergency or in time of war a limited censorship may be imposed on the newspapers, publications and mass media in matters related to public safety or purposes of national security in accordance with the law.

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

There is no functional difference between censorship and the threat of censorship.

For thirty years the press has ceased to exist in Turkey. There are indeed newspapers, many of them even, but the scissors of censorship cut them in so emasculating a manner that they no longer have any potency. If I dare, I would call them gelded newspapers or rather, to keep the local color, eunuchs.

In a democracy threatened by excessive secrecy and the criminalizing of news gathering, the more sunlight the better.

I'm not going to censor you fellows. I'm just leaving it up to each man's sense of responsibility.

State intervention in the literary realm went far beyond the blue-penciling of texts. It extended to the shaping of literature itself as a force at work throughout the social order. If states wielded such power in the age of print, what will restrain them from abusing it in the age of the Internet?

We cannot have a society in which some dictator somewhere can impose censorship here in the United States.

There is no such thing as absolute freedom of the press, not even in the most advanced countries in the world. There are things you just don't say, because it will destabilise the environment.

Given an opportunity, Modi has violated the freedom of press both in letter and spirit. He destroys freedom of the press whenever he gets a chance.

To all the self-righteous defenders of 'freedom of speech' who oh-so-ardently proclaimed that FARA registration places no restrictions whatsoever on RT's journalistic work in the U.S.: Withdrawal of Congressional credentials speaks much louder than empty platitudes.

I feel instead of censorship, we need to self-regulate ourselves while producing any kind of content.

Limiting the freedom of news 'just a little bit' is in the same category with the classic example 'a little bit pregnant.

If by the liberty of the press were understood merely the liberty of discussing the propriety of public measures and political opinions, let us have as much of it as you please: But if it means the liberty of affronting, calumniating and defaming one another, I, for my part, own myself willing to part with my share of it, whenever our legislators shall please so to alter the law and shall cheerfully consent to exchange my liberty of abusing others for the privilege of not being abused myself.