There is nothing that dies so hard and rallies so often as intolerance. The vices and passions which it summons to its support are the most ruthless and the most persistent harbored in the human breast. They sometimes sleep but they never seem to die. Anything, any extraordinary situation [i.e. 911], any unnecessary controversy [i.e. sex education, abortion] may light those fires again and plant in our republic that which has destroyed every republic which undertook to nurse it. William E. Borah [editor's additions in box brackets]

1978

Remember, that the original state of the minds of uneducated men is vulgar, you now know why vulgar and commonplace works please the majority. Therefore, educate your mind, and fight the hydra-headed monster-- vulgarity... Vulgarity astonishes, produces a sensation; refinement atracts by delicacy and charm and must be sought out. Vulgarity obtrudes itself, refinement is unobtrusive and requires the introduction of education. - Ralph Waldo Emerson

ob·trude v. ob·trud·ed, ob·trud·ing, ob·trudes v.tr.
1. To impose (oneself or one's ideas) on others with undue insistence or without invitation.

Censorship is the tool of those who have the need to hide actualities from themselves and others. Their fear is only their inability to face what is real. Somewhere in their upbringing they were shielded against the total facts of our experience. They were only taught to look one way when many ways exist.
Charles Bukowski

The books that the world calls immoral are the books that show the world its own shame.
Oscar Wilde

The danger of censorship in cultural media increases in proportion to the degree to which one approaches the winning of a mass audience.
James Farrell

In America - as elsewhere - free speech is confined to the dead. Mark Twain