QuoteProject
Censorship ends in logical completeness when nobody is allowed to read any books except the books that nobody can read.
George Bernard Shaw
ShareWTF𝕏

Interpretation

What this quote means

Censorship leads to a paradox where only unreadable content is permitted, highlighting the futility of restricting knowledge.

George Bernard Shaw's quote suggests that censorship ultimately leads to an absurd state where the only literature allowed is that which is inaccessible or without value. This statement emphasizes the irony of suppressing ideas to the point that only content that cannot be comprehended remains available, thus warning against the dangers of censorship in undermining intellectual freedom and critical thinking.

Themes

CensorshipKnowledgeFreedomParadoxTruth

In practice

Example use cases

During a speech on the importance of free expression, you might quote Shaw to illustrate the absurdity of limiting access to literature.

More from George Bernard Shaw

What we want is to see the child in pursuit of knowledge, and not knowledge in pursuit of the child.
George Bernard ShawRead
Marriage is good enough for the lower classes: they have facilities for desertion that are denied to us.
George Bernard ShawRead
Forgive him, for he believes that the customs of his tribe are the laws of nature!
George Bernard ShawRead
Those who talk most about the blessings of marriage and the constancy of its vows are the very people who declare that if the chain were broken and the prisoners left free to choose, the whole social fabric would fly asunder. You cannot have the argument both ways. If the prisoner is happy, why lock him in? If he is not, why pretend that he is?
George Bernard ShawRead
Treat a friend as a person who may someday become your enemy; an enemy as a person who may someday become your friend.
George Bernard ShawRead
The happiness of credulity is a cheap and dangerous quality.
George Bernard ShawRead

Similar quotes

Fantasy flows in where fact leaves a vacuum.
Tom StoppardRead
The cat sat on the mat is not a story. The cat sat on the other cat’s mat is a story.
John Le CarreRead
Oft expectation fails, and most oft there where most it promises; and oft it hits where hope is coldest, and despair most fits.
William ShakespeareRead
I hope for the day when everyone can speak again of God without embarrassment.
Paul TillichRead
That's the whole point of good propaganda. You want to create a slogan that nobody's going to be against, and everybody's going to be for. Nobody knows what it means, because it doesn't mean anything.
Noam ChomskyRead
There are not in the world at any one time more than a dozen persons who read and understand Plato:-never enough to pay for an edition of his works; yet to every generation these come duly down, for the sake of those few persons, as if God brought them written in his hand.
Ralph Waldo EmersonRead

A little wisdom, now and then

Subscribe for the occasional hand-picked quote. No noise.