When you censure the Age, Be cautious and sage, Lest the Courtiers offended should be: If you mention Vice or Bribe, 'Tis so pat to all the Tribe ;, Each cries----That was levell'd at me.
To this day I have no idea what dissident professor or librarian placed feminist texts on the bookshelves at the university library in Jeddah, but I found them there. They filled me with terror. I understood they were pulling at a thread that would unravel everything.
Art should be appreciated with passion and violence, not with a tepid, depreciating elegance that fears the censoriousness of a common room.
Musicians used to be way more instrumental just in providing a soundtrack to what's going on in the world. And it's also important to state what we think. There's like this fear for their career, if they have anything intelligent to say about politics. And that's really messed up.
By placing discretion in the hands of an official to grant or deny a license, such a statute creates a threat of censorship that by its very existence chills free speech.
I never know if a book is crazy or not. There's that fear - this is the one that will end it all.
If we wander around as politicians jumping at every shadow and desperately afraid of having our words taken out of context or attacks layered on in an unfair way, I think we're actually doing a disrespect to Canadians, to people's intelligence.
Nowadays, you suffer the same risks - ostracism, career loss, possible assault - for being perceived as racist that you would have encountered a century ago for daring to question racist ideology.
When Trump goes after the media and calls it fake news, he should be impeached - and everyone should say this. But the media lives in fear.
