Please enjoy these quotes that address how censorship is a tool employed by tyrants and authoritarian regimes, because TikTok staff certainly won't like them!
These quotes offer a wide perspective on the negative impact of censorship, especially when used by those in power to suppress dissent and control the flow of information.
"Censorship reflects society's lack of confidence in itself. It is a hallmark of an authoritarian regime."
— Potter Stewart
"A free press is the unsleeping guardian of every other right that free men prize; it is the most dangerous foe of tyranny."
— Winston Churchill
"Wherever they burn books, they will also, in the end, burn human beings."
— Heinrich Heine
"To limit the press is to insult a nation; to prohibit reading of certain books is to declare the inhabitants to be either fools or slaves."
— Claude Adrien Helvétius
"When any government, or any church for that matter, undertakes to say to its subjects, 'This you may not read, this you must not see, this you are forbidden to know,' the end result is tyranny and oppression no matter how holy the motives."
— Robert A. Heinlein
"The moment you restrict free speech, you create a tyrant."
— Alan Dershowitz
"Assassination is the extreme form of censorship."
— George Bernard Shaw
"Whoever would overthrow the liberty of a nation must begin by subduing the freeness of speech."
— Benjamin Franklin
"Our liberty depends on the freedom of the press, and that cannot be limited without being lost."
— Thomas Jefferson
"Censorship is the child of fear and the father of ignorance."
— Laurie Halse Anderson
"He who destroys a good book kills reason itself."
— John Milton
"When truth is replaced by silence, the silence is a lie."
— Yevgeny Yevtushenko
"The liberty of the press is essential to the security of freedom in a state: it ought not, therefore, to be restrained."
— John Adams
"Restriction of free thought and free speech is the most dangerous of all subversions."
— William O. Douglas
"The first condition of progress is the removal of censorship."
— George Bernard Shaw
"Think for yourselves and let others enjoy the privilege to do so, too."
— Voltaire
"If liberty means anything at all, it means the right to tell people what they do not want to hear."
— George Orwell
"To silence criticism is to silence freedom."
— Sidney Hook
"When you tear out a man’s tongue, you are not proving him a liar; you’re only telling the world that you fear what he might say."
— George R.R. Martin
"A critical, independent and investigative press is the lifeblood of any democracy."
— Nelson Mandela
"Censorship is to art as lynching is to justice."
— Henry Louis Gates Jr.
"Freedom is the right to tell people what they do not want to hear."
— George Orwell
"To forbid us anything is to make us have a mind for it."
— Michel de Montaigne
"Books and ideas are the most effective weapons against intolerance and ignorance."
— Lyndon B. Johnson
"Censorship is the enemy of truth; it is the enemy of progress."
— John F. Kennedy
"Censorship is the tool of those who have the need to hide actualities from themselves and from others."
— Charles Bukowski
"The ultimate tyranny in a society is not control by martial law. It is control by the psychological manipulation of consciousness."
— Barbara Marciniak
"Censorship is the strongest drive in human nature; sex is a weak second."
— Phil Kerby
"Whenever you have an efficient government you have a dictatorship."
— Harry S. Truman
"Art is the only way to run away without leaving home."
— Twyla Tharp
"The only valid censorship of ideas is the right of people not to listen."
— Tommy Smothers
"A government that is afraid of its citizens is a democracy. A government that is afraid of its citizens’ rights is a tyranny."
— Thomas Jefferson
"To prohibit the reading of certain books is to declare the inhabitants to be either fools or slaves."
— Claude Adrien Helvétius
"Censorship is the tool of those who fear they cannot win a fair fight."
— Lynn Abbey
"Books won't stay banned. They won't burn. Ideas won't go to jail."
— Alfred Whitney Griswold
"Without freedom of thought, there can be no such thing as wisdom; and no such thing as public liberty, without freedom of speech."
— Benjamin Franklin
"The only thing necessary for the triumph of evil is for good men to do nothing."
— Edmund Burke
"Censorship, like charity, should begin at home; but, unlike charity, it should end there."
— Clare Booth Luce
"You can cage the singer but not the song."
— Harry Belafonte
"If you can't say what you want, the next thing to go is freedom of thought."
— Anonymous