Censorship Quotes (3 quotes)
In Mathematics, censorship and criticism can not be allowed to everyone; the speeches of the rhetoricians and the defenses of the lawyers are worthless.
From In Artem Analyticem Isagoge (1591, “Introduction to the Analytic Arts”), translated from the original Latin to French in Édouard Lucas, Récréations Mathématiques (1883), Vol. 2, 1, given as, “Dans les Mathématiques, la censure et la critique ne peuvent être permises à tout le monde; les discours des rhéteurs et les défenses des avocats n’y valent rien.” English version from the French by Webmaster using Google translate.
The Internet treats censorship as a malfunction and routes around it.
In Richard Rogers, 'The Internet Treats Censorship as a Malfunction and Routes Around It? : A New Media Approach to the Study of State Internet Censorship', the attribution of this quote to John Gilmore is supported by giving an excerpt from the notes in Joseph Reagle, 'Why the Internet is Good' [source: Gilmore states: “I have never found where I first said this. But everyone believes it was me, as do I. If you find an appearance of this quote from before March ’94, please let me know.”] Also cited as attribute to John Gilmore in Peter H. Lewis, 'Limiting a Medium Without Boundaries; How Do You Let the Good Fish Through the Net While Blocking the Bad?', New York Times (15 Jan 1996), D1. The Rogers article is collected in Jussi Parikka and Tony D. Sampson (eds.), The Spam Book: On Viruses, Porn, and Other Anomalies from the Dark Side of Digital Culture (2009), 243.
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: such a prohibition ought to fill them with disdain.
From the original French, “Les semences des découvertes présentées à tous par le hazard, sont stériles, si l’attention ne les séconde,” in 'Notes', De l'Homme, de ses Facultés Intellectuelles, et de son Éducation (1773), Tome 1, 383. English version from Claude Adrien Helvétius and W. Hooper (trans.), 'Notes', A Treatise on Man, His Intellectual Faculties and His Education: A Posthumous Work of M. Helvetius (1777), Note 53, 375.
In science it often happens that scientists say, 'You know that's a really good argument; my position is mistaken,' and then they would actually change their minds and you never hear that old view from them again. They really do it. It doesn't happen as often as it should, because scientists are human and change is sometimes painful. But it happens every day. I cannot recall the last time something like that happened in politics or religion.
(1987) -- 
