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. . . CAUSES AND CONSEQUENCES see: "CONSEQUENCES" see: "REASON/S" see "ACTIONS" for other related links Whatsoever a man soweth, that shall he also reap. --Bible "Galatians" 6:7 - If a cause be good, the most violent attack of its enemies will not injure it so much as an injudicious defense of it by its friends. --C.C. Colton (17801832) English clergyman and writer. _Lacon: or, Many Things in Few Words; Addressed to Those Who Think_ [1820] Those physical difficulties which you cannot account for, be very slow to arraign, for he that would be wiser than nature would be wiser than God. --C.C. Colton (17801832) English clergyman and writer. _Lacon: or, Many Things in Few Words; Addressed to Those Who Think_ [1820] - A great flame follows a little spark. --Dante Alighieri (12651321) Italian poet, literary theorist, and moral philosopher. _La dinina commedia_ (The Divine Comedy) [c. 13101321] Small are the seeds fate does unheeded sow Of slight beginnings to important ends. --Sir William Davenant [also spelled D'Avenant] (16061668) English poet, playwright, and theater manager. We forge the chains we wear in life. --Charles Dickens (18121870) English novelist. _A Christmas Carol_ [1843] Our deeds still travel with us from afar. And what we have been makes us what we are. --George Eliot [Mary Ann Evans] (18191880) English novelist. _Middlemarch_ [18711872] The invalid assumption that correlation implies cause is probably among the two or three most serious and common errors of human reasoning. --Stephen Jay Gould (19412002) American palaeontologist. _The Mismeasure of Man_, ch. 6 [1981] Every effect doth, after a sort, contain, or at least resemble, the cause from which it proceedeth. --Richard Hooker (1553/41600) English theologian Our acts make or mar us, we are the children of our own deeds. --Victor Hugo (18021885) French poet, dramatist, and novelist. Quoted in "The Unitarian" vol. XI, no. I [January 1896]. Most men make use of the first part of their life to render the last part miserable. --Jean de La Bruyθre (16451696) French essayist and moralist. _Les Caractθres_ [1688] "De l'Homme" There is a destiny that makes us brothers, None goes his way alone; All that we send into the lives of others, Comes back into our own. --Edwin Markham (18521940) American poet and lecturer. _A Creed_ [1900] A person may cause evil to others not only by his actions but by his inaction, and in either case he is justly accountable to them for the injury. --John Stuart Mill (18061873) English philosopher and social reformer. _On Liberty_, ch. I "Introductory" [1859] - The cause of America is in great measure the cause of all mankind. --Thomas Paine [spelled Pane prior to 1774] (17371809) English-American writer and political pamphleteer. _Common Sense_, introduction [1776] A bad cause will ever be supported by bad means and bad men. --Thomas Paine [spelled Pane prior to 1774] (17371809) English-American writer and political pamphleteer. "The American Crisis" (a pamphlet) no. 2 [13 January 1777] - Judge not of actions by their mere effect; Dive to the centre, and the cause detect; Great deeds from meanest springs may take their course, And smallest virtues from a mighty source. --Alexander Pope (16881744) English poet. Quoted in _Blackwood's Edinburgh Magazine_, vol. 28 [August 1830]. Sow an act, and you reap a habit. Sow a habit, and you reap a character. Sow a character, and you reap a destiny. --Charles Reade (18141884) English novelist and playwright. Attributed in _Notes and Queries_, 9th series, vol. 12 [JulyDecember 1903]. - Hence, therefore, every leader to his charge; For, on their answer, will we set on them, And God befriend us as our cause is just! --William Shakespeare (15641616) English dramatist. _Henry IV_ [1597] Unnatural deeds Do breed unnatural troubles. Infected minds To their deaf pillow will discharge their secrets. --William Shakespeare (15641616) English dramatist. _Macbeth_ [1606] - The game of life is the game of boomerangs. Our thoughts, deeds and words return to us sooner or later, with astounding accuracy. --attributed to Florence Scovel Shinn (18711940) American author. Enthusiasm for a cause sometimes warps judgment. --William Howard Taft (18571930) 27th President of the United States [19091913] and Chief Justice of the Supreme Court [19211930]. There are few mortals so insensible that their affections cannot be gained by mildness, their confidence by sincerity, their hatred by scorn or neglect. --Johann Georg Zimmermann (17281795) Swiss philosophical writer and physician. _Aphorisms and Reflections on Men, Morals and Things_ [1800] ----- condign [kuhn-DINE; KON-dine], adjective: Suitable to the fault or crime; deserved; adequate. karma (noun) ['kah(r)-mκ] The moral cause and effect system of Buddhism and Hinduism that assumes every action has a direct consequence. To simplify extremely, the consequence of good acts is happiness while the consequence of bad acts is misfortune and suffering. In fact, all acts, however minute and seemingly insignificant, have a consequence in this life and in determining the form in which you will be reincarnated in your next life.   CAUTION . . see: "CAREFUL" see: "DANGER" see: "PRUDENCE" see: "RISK" see: "SELF-CONTROL" Hasten deliberately. --Augustus [Gaius Octavius] (63 B.C.14 A.D.) The first Roman emperor. {Quoting a Greek proverb, according to Aullus Gellius} Caution, though very often wasted is a good risk to take. --Josh Billings [Henry Wheeler Shaw] (18181885) American humorist Confident because of our caution. --Epictetus (55135) Greek philosopher Tar-baby ain't sayin' nuthin', en Brer Fox, he lay low. --Joel Chandler Harris (18481908) American writer. _Uncle Remus and His Legends of the Old Plantation_ [1881] Caution is the eldest child of wisdom. --Victor Hugo (18021885) French poet, dramatist, and novelist. It is a good thing to learn caution by the misfortunes of others. --Publilius Syrus (8543 B.C.) Latin writer of mimes who was originally a slave. Wer gar zu viel bedenkt, wird wenig leisten. (He that is overcautious will accomplish nothing.) --Friedrich von Schiller (17591805) German poet, historian, and dramatist. _Wilhelm Tell_ [1804] - Discretion is the better part of valor. --William Shakespeare (15641616) English dramatist. _Henry IV_ [1597], pt. 1 Wisely and slow; they stumble that run fast. --William Shakespeare (15641616) English dramatist. _Romeo and Juliet_, act II, scene iii [15951596] - ----- circumspect [SUR-kuhm-spekt], adjective: Marked by attention to all circumstances and probable consequences; cautious; prudent. . . see: "LIVE" A man hath no better thing under the sun than to eat, and to drink, and to be merry. --Bible "Ecclesiastes" 8:15 Let us have wine and women, mirth and laughter, Sermons and soda water the day after. --Lord Byron [George Gordon Byron] (17881824) English Romantic poet and satirist. _Don Juan_, Canto II, [1819], Stanza 178 Start living now. Stop saving the good china for that special occasion. Stop withholding your love until that special person materializes. Every day you are alive is a special occasion. Every minute, every breath, is a gift from God. --Mary Manin Morrissey (1949 ) In John D. Moore _Quotations for Martial Artists_, p. 3 [2003].  CELEBRATIONS . . Photograph: Celebrating the New Year in Times Square, 1937. see "HAPPINESS" for related links The second day of July, 1776, will be the most memorable epoch in the history of America. I am apt to believe that it will be celebrated by succeeding generations as the great anniversary festival. It ought to be commemorated as the day of deliverance, by solemn acts of devotion to God Almighty. It ought to be solemnized with pomp and parade, with shows, games, sports, guns, bells, bonfires, and illustrations, from one end of this continent to the other, from this time forward forevermore. --John Adams (17351826) First VP and second President of the United States. In his second letter to Abigail Adams [3 July 1776]. A diplomat is a man who always remembers a woman's birthday but never remembers her age. --attributed to Robert Frost (18741963) American poet. The holiest of all holidays are those Kept by ourselves in silence and apart; The secret anniversaries of the heart. --Henry Wadsworth Longfellow (18071882) American poet. "Holidays" [1877] ----- shivaree [SHIV-uh-ree], noun: 1. A mock serenade with kettles, pans, horns, and other noisemakers given for a newly married couple. 2. An elaborate, noisy celebration. . . see: "FAME" see "ACTORS" for other related links see "PEOPLE" for other related links A celebrity is a person who works hard all his life to become well known, then wears dark glasses to avoid being recognized. --Fred Allen [John Florence Sullivan] (18941956) American humorist. Quoted in James B. Simpson _Best Quotes of '54, '55, '56_ [1957]. Many men and many women enjoy popular esteem, not because they are known, but because they are not. --Sιbastien-Roch Nicolas Chamfort (17411794) French playwright and conversationalist. A celebrity is one who is known by many people he is glad he doesn't know. --H.L. (Henry Louis) Mencken (18801956) American journalist and literary critic. . . see: "SEX" see: "MARRIAGE" see "LIFESTYLE" for other related links Being an old maid is like death by drowning, a really delightful sensation after you cease to struggle. --Edna Ferber (18871968) American novelist and short-story writer. In R.E. Drennan _Wit's End_ [1973]. Deep down, we remain human, very human and have all the desires to love and be loved by one person . . . Every time I did a marriage, every time I see people married, I say, 'That could have been me.' --attributed to Basil Hume (19231999) English cardinal. Marriage has many pains, but celibacy has no pleasures. --Samuel Johnson (17091784) English poet, critic, and lexicographer. _Rasselas_, ch. 26 [1759] As to marriage or celibacy, let a man take which he will, he is sure to repent. --Socrates (470?399 B.C.) Greek philosopher. Augustus passed laws to tighten the sanctions against celibacy and to increase revenue, He failed, however, to make marriage and the raising of children more popular childlessness was too attractive. --Tacitus [or Publius Cornelius Tacitus or Gaius Cornelius Tacitus] (c.55c.117), Roman orator, lawyer, senator, and historian. _Annals_, bk. 3.25 ----- celibate (adjective) ['sel-κ-bκt] 1/ Unmarried for religious reasons, bound by oath or inclination never to marry. 2/ Sexually abstinent. . . see: "FREE PRESS" & "FREE SPEECH" see: "FREEDOM" see "KNOWLEDGE" for other related links see "JOURNALISM" for other related links What havoc has been made of books through every century of the Christian era? Where are fifty gospels, condemned as spurious by the bull of Pope Gelasius? Where are the forty wagon-loads of Hebrew manuscripts burned in France, by order of another pope, because suspected of heresy? Remember the 'index expurgatorius', the inquisition, the stake, the axe, the halter and the guillotine. --John Adams (17351826) First VP and second President of the United States. Letter to John Taylor. TV, which compared to music plays a comparatively small role in the formation of young people's character and taste, is a consensus monster the Right monitors its content for sex, the Left for violence, and many other interested sects for many other things. But the music has hardly been touched, and what efforts have been made are both ineffectual and misguided about the nature of the problem. The result is nothing less than parents' loss of control over their children's moral education at a time when no one else is seriously concerned with it. --Allan Bloom (19301992) American writer and educator. _The Closing of the American Mind_ [1987] You hate to think you have to censor your language to meet other people's lack of understanding. --Julian Bond (1940 ) American leader of the civil-rights movement. It was a great relief to be in a country where salacious sex literature cannot be sold; where putrid motion pictures and gangster films cannot be shown. The new Germany has burned great masses of corrupting books and magazines along with its bonfires of Jewish and communistic libraries --Dr. John W. Bradbury, Watchman-Examiner [13 September 1934] Everybody favors free speech in the slack moments when no axes are being ground. --Heywood Broun (18881939) American journalist & father of Heywood Hale Broun. In "New York World" [23 October 1926]. . . . In other words, literature should not be suppressed merely because it offends the moral code of the censor. --William O. Douglas (18981980) American Supreme Court Associate Justice [1939-1975]. Opinion, _Roth v. U.S._, 354 U.S. 476 [1957]. Who dares not speak his free thoughts is a slave. --Euripides (485?406 B.C.) Greek dramatist. We are willing enough to praise freedom when she is safely tucked away in the past and cannot be a nuisance. In the present, amidst dangers whose outcome we cannot foresee, we get nervous about her, and admit censorship. --E.M. [Edward Morgan] Forster (18791970) English novelist. _Two Cheers for Democracy_ [1951] "The Tercentenary of the Areopagitica" ^^ [D]uring the First World War, suppression went far beyond anything the war could possibly justify. An outburst of anti-German feeling sometimes took absurd forms: sauerkraut became "liberty cabbage" on some menus, and some people even wanted to call German measles "liberty measles." There were schools that dropped German from the curriculum; the New York Times applauded this idea, and recommended Spanish instead, or perhaps French, which was "more cosmopolitan and urbane." Four county councils in Missouri banned anybody from speaking German on the telephone; and some towns tried to banish it on the streets. The town of Potsdam, Missouri, changed its name to Pershing. The language of Goethe and Schiller survived this onslaught; other forms of xenophobia had more serious results. In a burst of fervor, Congress passed an Espionage Act in 1917. The law understandably imposed severe penalties on people who passed secrets to the enemy. But it also made it a crime to "willfully make or convey false reports or false statements" with the aim of interfering with the "operation or success of the military or naval forces" of the country, or to "promote the success of its enemies"; or to try to foment "insubordination, disloyalty, mutiny, or refusal of duty" among the armed forces; or to "willfully obstruct the recruiting or enlistment service of the United States." The Trading with the Enemy Act (1917) did what the title suggested; but it also provided that nothing could be published or printed "in any foreign language" about the government of the United States, "or of any nation engaged in the present war, its politics, [or] international relations," unless a full translation was lodged with the postmaster general. These provisions were barely discussed in the sometimes heated debates over the Espionage Act and the rest of the legislative package; in practice, they proved to be pregnant with trouble for anybody who fell short of 100 percent red-blooded patriotism, and in particular, for Americans of the left-wing persuasion. The war generated heat and paranoia. The government found it easy to smear speech that opposed the war or denounced capitalism or the like as dangerous talk which interfered with the war effort. The Sedition Act of 1918 was another truly drastic statute. Under this law, it was a crime to spread "false statements" that might hinder the war effort, obstruct the sale of bonds, or incite mutiny and disloyalty in the army. The act also criminalized saying, printing, or writing any "disloyal, profane, scurrilous or abusive language" about the government, the Constitution, the flag, the army, the uniform; or saying anything that would bring the government or the Constitution "into contempt, scorn, contumely, or disrepute." Anything written which violated the act was "nonmailable," and could not be sent through the post. In short, only total jingoism was acceptable or legal. German-Americans in some parts of the country had a particularly tough time. In front-line South Dakota a state with a large German population zealous officials raided the offices of a German-language newspaper, the Deutscher Herold, where they found some truly dastardly objects, including a paperweight with an image of the kaiser. The editor, Conrad Kornmann, was charged with espionage, mostly because of a private letter he wrote to a friend, in which he was lukewarm about the war, to say the least. That this was an attack on vital war interests or the armed forces was totally absurd, but a jury found Kornmann guilty. The appeal court reversed; still, Kornmann's life was a shambles. South Dakota was not the only state in danger. Rumors flew about in remote Montana of German spies poised to invade from Canada. Local "liberty" or "defense" committees rounded up "slackers," reds, Wobblies, and other bad elements; Montana whipped itself into a froth and conducted a major witch-hunt. In Illinois, a Granite City man got two years in Fort Leavenworth for shooting off his mouth in a saloon to the effect that he liked the kaiser, and would fight for him. In 1918 the Rev. John Fontana, a Lutheran minister in Salem, North Dakota, a German community, went on trial for violating the Espionage Act by obstructing the draft and fomenting insubordination. The evidence was flimsy, to say the least some testimony that Fontana was unenthusiastic about the war, refused to buy liberty bonds, and prayed for the "old Fatherland." In wartime, the prosecutor said, "the unbridled tongue is more dangerous than the arms of the enemy, more stealthy than the submarine," The jury convicted him. The judge fulminated against Fontana for not putting away his German soul; he criticized immigrants in general ("these thousands of little islands of foreigners"), and sentenced Fontana to three years in Leavenworth. On appeal, the case was reversed but it seems incredible, today, that it was brought in the first place. --Lawrence M. Friedman (1930 ) Ch. 5 "Race Relations and Civil Liberties" pp. 138-140 ^^ Is it a book you would even wish your wife or your servants to read? (Of D. H. Lawrence's "Lady Chatterley's Lover".) --Mervyn Griffith-Jones (1909-1979) British lawyer. Speech for the prosecution at Old Bailey [20 October 1960]. Wherever they burn books they will also, in the end, burn human beings. --Heinrich Heine (17971856) German poet. _Almansor, A Tragedy_ [1823] 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 Helvιtius (17151771) French philosopher. - The ultimate good desired is best reached by free trade in ideas the best test of truth is the power of the thought to get itself accepted in the competition of the market. --Oliver Wendell Holmes, Jr. (18411935) Justice of the United States Supreme Court, legal historian, and philosopher. If there is any principle of the Constitution that more imperatively calls for attachment than any other, it is the principle of free thought not free thought for those who agree with us, but freedom for the thought that we hate. --Oliver Wendell Holmes, Jr. (18411935) Justice of the United States Supreme Court, legal historian, and philosopher. - When we lose the right to be different, we lose the privilege to be free. --Charles Evans Hughes (18621948) American professor of law, politician, and Chief Justice of the Supreme Court [19301941]. Opinion [17 June 1925]. - Truth is great and will prevail if left to herself. She is the proper and sufficient antagonist to error, and has nothing to fear from the conflict unless disarmed of her natural weapons, free argument and debate. --Thomas Jefferson (17431826) American statesman and president [18011809]. I am really mortified to be told that, in the United States of America, a fact like this can become a subject of inquiry, and of criminal inquiry too, as an offense against religion; that a question about the sale of a book can be carried before the civil magistrate. Is this then our freedom of religion? Are we to have a censor whose imprimatur shall say what books may be sold and what we may buy? And who is thus to dogmatize religious opinions for our citizens? Whose foot is to be the measure to which ours are all to be cut or stretched? Is a priest to be our inquisitor, or shall a layman, simple as ourselves, set up his reason as the rule for what we are to read and what we must believe? It is an insult to our citizens to question whether they are rational beings or not, and blasphemy against religion to suppose it cannot stand the test of truth and reason. --Thomas Jefferson (17431826) American statesman and president [18011809]. Letter to bookseller N.G. Dufief [19 April 1814] (Concerning civil authorities in Philadelphia who had prevented the sale of a book on the origin of the world.) - In 1798 Congress had passed, with Adams' approval, the Alien and Sedition Acts. These four measures limited freedom of the press and speech and restricted the activities of aliens, especially French and Irish. They were part of the paranoia of the decade, which infected both sides of the revolutionary argument and predictably led to ludicrous results. In the first case which came before the courts, Luther Baldwin of New Jersey was convicted and fined $100 for wishing that a wad from the presidential saluting-cannon might 'hit Adams in the ass.' --Paul Johnson (1928 ) British historian. _A History of the American People_ [1997] Every man has a right to utter what he thinks as truth, and every other man has a right to knock him down for it. --Samuel Johnson (17091784) English poet, critic, and lexicographer. The author of the Satanic Verses book [Salman Rushdie], which is against all Islam, the Prophet, and the Koran, and all those involved in its publication who were aware of its content, are sentenced to death. I ask all Moslems to execute them wherever they find them. --Ruhollah Khomeini (19021989) Ayatollah Khomeini was the founder and supreme leader of the Islamic Republic of Iran. Fatwa against Salman Rushdie [14 February 1989]. - - Why should you be planning for the publication of any new work at a time when nearly all the books which have thus far appeared are being taken away from us? It seems to me that, at least for some years to come, no one among us will dare to write anything but letters. There has just been published an Index of the books which, under penalty of excommunication, we are no longer permitted to possess. The number of those prohibited (particularly of works originating in Germany) is so great that there will remain but few ... I shall begin tomorrow going over my own collection, so that nothing may be found in it which is not authorised. Should I describe the process as a shipwreck or a holocaust of literature? --Latinus Latinius, a scholar, to Andrea Masius, Rome [January 1559]; in M.J. Cohan and John Major {eds.} _History in Quotations_ [2004] p. 363. Cohan & Major explain: The Index of prohibited books issued by Pope Pius IV in January 1559 was another weapon in the armoury that the papacy was assembling to combat Protestantism. Luther and his fellow reformers had made unprecedented use of the printing press to propagate their ideas, but Catholics were now banned from reading their books. - Murder is a crime. Describing murder is not. Sex is not a crime. Describing sex *is*. --Gershon Legman (19171999) American folklorist. _Love & Death_ "A Study in Censorship" [1949] All educational work in the Soviet Republic of workers and peasants, in the field of political education in general and in the field of art in particular, should be imbued with the spirit of the class struggle being waged by the proletariat for the successful achievement of the aims of its dictatorship. --V.I. Lenin (18701924) Russian revolutionary and first head of the Soviet state (19171924). [8 October 1920] Censorship, like charity, should begin at home, but unlike charity, it should end there. --Clare Boothe Luce (19031987) American playwright and politician. - The main difference between the Soviet camps and detention camps in the rest of the world is not their huge, unimaginable size or the murderous conditions found there, but something else altogether. It's the need to tell an endless series of lies to save your own life, to lie every day, to wear a mask for years and never say what you really think. In Soviet Russia, free citizens have to do the same thing. Dissembling and lies become the only means of defense. Public meetings, business meetings, encounters on the street, conversations, even posters on the wall all get wrapped up in an official language that doesn't contain a single word of truth. People in the West can't possibly understand what it is really like to lose the right to say what you think for years on end, and the way you have to repress the tiniest "illegal" thought you might have and stay silent as the tomb. The sort of pressure breaks something inside people. --Jules Margoline [1949] _The Black Book of Communism_ - If the First Amendment means anything, it means that a State has no business telling a man, sitting alone in his own house, what books he may read or what films he may watch. --Thurgood Marshall (19081993) American jurist and first African-American to serve on the Supreme Court [19671991]. "Stanley v. Georgia" 394 U.S. 557 [1969] - If all mankind minus one were of one opinion, and only one person were of the contrary opinion, mankind would be no more justified in silencing that one person, than he, if he had the power, would be justified in silencing mankind. --John Stuart Mill (18061873) English philosopher and social reformer. _On Liberty_, ch. 2 [1859] We can never be sure that the opinion we are endeavoring to stifle is a false opinion; and if we were sure, stifling it would be an evil still. --John Stuart Mill (18061873) English philosopher and social reformer. _On Liberty_ [1859] - - Who kills a man kills a reasonable creature, God's image; but he who destroys a good book, kills reason itself, kills the image of God, as it were in the eye. --John Milton (16081674) English poet. _Areopagitica: a Speech for the Liberty of Unlicensed Printing_ [1644] Give me the liberty to know, to utter, and to argue freely according to conscience, above all liberties. --John Milton (16081674) English poet. _Areopagitica: a Speech for the Liberty of Unlicensed Printing_ [1644] - You have not converted a man, because you have silenced him. --Lord [John] Morley (18381923) British Liberal politician, writer, and newspaper editor. _On Compromise_ [1874] If the newspapers of a country are filled with good news, the jails will be filled with good people. --Daniel Patrick Moynihan (19272003) American scholar and politician. Senator Smoot is an institute Not to be bribed with pelf; He guards our homes from erotic tomes By reading them all himself. --Ogden Nash (19021971) American writer of humorous poetry. "Invocation", l. 23 [1931] The defensive battle of the Chinese regime against faxes, e-mail and TV broadcasts from the capitalist world serves not only to keep it in power but also to keep at bay a different concept of society. Where television pictures from the world of universal commodities are still frowned upon, as in North Korea and some Islamic countries, photographs and detailed reports do the rounds instead. Even in Iran, where American heavy metal is the most popular music among middle-class teenagers, the Ayatollahs no longer have their sovereign air space under firm control. --_New Perspectives Quarterly_ [Fall 1995] p.3. If these writings of the Greeks agree with the book of God, they are useless and need not be preserved; if they disagree, they are pernicious and ought to be destroyed. (On burning the library of Alexandria, A.D. c. 641.) --Caliph Omar (581644) Muslim caliph. In Edward Gibbon _The Decline and Fall of the Roman Empire _ [1776-1788]. Don't you see that the whole aim of Newspeak is to narrow the range of thought? In the end we shall make thoughtcrime literally impossible, because there will be no words in which to express it. --George Orwell [Eric Blair] (19031950) English novelist. _Nineteen Eighty-Four_ [1949] The weapon of the dictator is not so much propaganda as censorship. --Terence H. Qualter (1925- ) _Propaganda and Psychological Warfare_ [1962], "Introduction" Books cannot be killed by fire. People die, but books never die. No man and no force can abolish memory. . . . In this war, we know, books are weapons. --Franklin D. Roosevelt (18821945) American Democratic statesman and President [19331945]. _Message to American Booksellers Association_ [23 April 1942]. What is freedom of expression? Without the freedom to offend, it ceases to exist. --Sir Salman Rushdie (1947 ) Indian-born British novelist. In "Weekend Guardian" [10 February 1990]. Censorship reflects a society's lack of confidence in itself. --Potter Stewart (19151985) Associate Justice of the U.S. Supreme Court [19581981]. If you've spent much time around the newly graduated, you'll find something striking about this younger generation. They have a new religion. It's called "sensitivity." There are plenty of things wrong in human conduct, but by far the greatest sin is "insensitivity." Anything that could faintly unsettle, upset, disturb, unnerve or discombobulate another person according to the litany of offenses ethnic, religious, sexual, etc. must be excised from speech and thought. The _reductio ad absurdum_ of this new creed is to be found in New York State Regents' Exams for graduating high school students. In the New York Times yesterday, we found out that even Isaac Bashevis Singer and Anton Chekhov have been bowdlerized to conform to the new faith. Their writing has been gutted of any conflict, ethnic references, sexual innuendo, and even hedonistic mentions of wine. It's so clarifying when all the fusty puritanisms of new left and old right combine. According to the bureaucrat defending this violation of literature, "The changes are made to satisfy the sensitivity guidelines the department uses, so no student will be 'uncomfortable in a testing situation.'" Doesn't she understand that making students uncomfortable is the _point_ of education? It's precisely when we read something offensive or strange or alien that we start to think, to put ourselves and our myopic lives into a broader context. What our education system is now attempting to do is therefore literally instill incuriosity into children, a stultifying, inoffensive, comfortable state in which all the difficult conflicts of the modern world are conflated into anodyne pabulum. Thank God there are some feisty people with brains ready to expose and fight this. Thank God also for Cathy Popkin, Lionel Trilling professor in the humanities at Columbia. She wrote the Regents: "I implore you to put a stop to the scandalous practice of censoring literary texts, ostensibly in the interest of our students. It is dishonest. It is dangerous. It is an embarrassment. It is the practice of fools." But the fools are now running a large part of the educational asylum. --Andrew Sullivan (1963 ) Anglo-American journalist. andrewsullivan.com [2 June 2002] I disapprove of what you say, but I will defend to the death your right to say it. (His attitude towards Helvιtius following the burning of the latter's De l'esprit in 1759.) --Voltaire (Franηois Marie Arouet) (16941778) French writer and philosopher. Attributed to Voltaire, the words are in fact in S.G. Tallentyre's summary _The Friends of Voltaire_ [1907] {ODTQ}. The Khomeini cry for the execution of Rushdie is an infantile cry. From the beginning of time we have seen that. To murder the thinker does not murder the thought. --Arnold Wesker (1932 ) English dramatist. In "Weekend Guardian" [3 June 1989]. I believe in censorship. I made a fortune out of it. --Mae West (18931980) American stage and film actress. Vietnam was the first war ever fought without any censorship. Without censorship, things can get terribly confused in the public mind. --William Westmoreland (19142005) American soldier. Quoted in "Washington Post" [19 March 1982]. I am inordinately proud these days of the quill, for it has shown itself, historically, to be the hypodermic which inoculates men and keeps the germ of freedom always in circulation, so that there are individuals in every time in every land who are the carriers, the Typhoid Mary's, capable of infecting others by mere contact and example. These persons are feared by every tyrant who shows his fear by burning the books and destroying the individuals. --E.B. [Elwyn Brooks] White (18991985) American essayist and literary stylist. "Freedom" written in July 1940, in _One Man's Meat_ [1944]. Damn all expurgated books, the dirtiest book of all is the expurgated book. --Walt Whitman (18191892) American poet. There is no such thing as a moral or an immoral book. Books are well written or badly written. That is all. --Oscar Wilde (18541900) Anglo-Irish dramatist and poet. I can imagine no greater disservice to the country than to establish a system of censorship that would deny to the people of a free republic like our own their indisputable right to criticize their own public officials. While exercising the great powers of the office I hold, I would regret in a crisis like the one through which we are now passing to lose the benefit of patriotic and intelligent criticism. --Woodrow Wilson (18561924) American Democratic statesman and President [19131921]. Letter to Arthur Brisbane [25 April 1917]. ----- bowdlerize BODE-luh-rise; BOWD-, transitive verb: 1. To remove or modify the parts (of a book, for example) considered offensive. 2. To modify, as by shortening, simplifying, or distorting in style or content. expurgate [EK-sper-geyt], verb: To remove objectionable words or passages from a document. imprimatur [im-prih-MAH-tur; -MAY-], noun: 1. Official license or approval to print or publish a book, paper, etc.; especially, such a license issued by the Roman Catholic episcopal authority. 2. Approval; sanction. 3. A mark of approval or distinction. end page | CALAMITIES - CALM | CALUMNY - CANADA | CANCER - CAPITAL PUNISHMENT | CAPITALISM | CAREFREE - CARPE DIEM | CARTER (JIMMY) - CATS & DOGS | CAUSES AND CONSEQUENCES - CENSORSHIP | CERTAINTY - CHANGE | CHANGING (ONE'S MIND) & CHANGING TIMES | CHARACTER | CHARACTER ASSASINATION - CHEERFULNESS | CHEER UP! - CHILDHOOD | CHILDREN | CHILDREN'S RHYME | CHILE & CHINA | CHOCOLATE - CHRISTIANITY | CHRISTMAS | CHURCH - CIGARS | CIRCUMSTANCES & CITIES | CIVILITY - CIVIL RIGHTS | CLARITY - CLEVER | CLOTHES - COFFEE | COLD - COLORS | COMEDY | COMFORT - COMMON SENSE | COMMUNICATION | COMMUNISM | COMPANIONSHIP - COMPASSION | COMPETITION - COMPLIMENTS | COMPOSERS - CONDUCTORS | CONFESSION - CONQUEST | CONSCIENCE - CONTENTED | CONTEXT - CONVERSATION | CONVICTION & COOKING | COOLIDGE - CORPORATIONS | CORRUPTION - COURAGE | COURT - COWS | CREATIVITY - CRIME | CRIME & PUNISHMENT - CROOKS | CRITICISM & CRITICS | CROWD (THE) - CUBA | CULTURE - CYNICS | | A | B | C | D | E | F | G | | Return Home | The Credits | The Cast | Act 1 | Act 2 | Act 3 | The Reviews | |
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