Skip to content

Censorship ends in logical completeness when nobody is allowed to read any books except the books that nobody can read.

— George Bernard Shaw

Another quote →

Source, in full

As quoted in "Literary Censorship in England" in Current Opinion, Vol. 55, No. 5 (November 1913), p. 378; this has sometimes appeared on the internet in paraphrased form as "Censorship ends in logical completeness when nobody is allowed to read any books except the books that nobody reads"

Topics

Books

More quotes by George Bernard Shaw

Love is an appetite which, like all other appetites, is destroyed for the moment by its gratification.

Getting Married (1908)

Must then a Christ perish in torment in every age to save those that have no imagination?

Saint Joan (1923)

One man that has a mind and knows it can always beat ten men who havnt and dont.

The Apple Cart (1928)

The worst sin towards our fellow creatures is not to hate them, but to be indifferent to them: that's the essence of inhumanity.

The test of a man or woman's breeding is how they behave in a quarrel.

The Philanderer (1893)

All George Bernard Shaw quotes →

You may also like

Reading maketh a full man; conference a ready man; and writing an exact man.

Francis Bacon Meditationes sacræ (1597)

It is not in the books of the Philosophers, but in the religious symbolism of the Ancients, that we must look for the footprints of Science, and re-discover the Mysteries of Knowledge.

Albert Pike Morals and Dogma of the Ancient and Accepted Scottish Rite of Freemasonry (1871)

There is more than one way to burn a book. And the world is full of people running about with lit matches.

Ray Bradbury Fahrenheit 451 (1953)

People say that life is the thing, but I prefer reading.

Logan Pearsall Smith Afterthoughts (1931)

Attribution

Quote text and notes from Wikiquote: George Bernard Shaw (page history), available under CC BY-SA 4.0. Source quality and labels are our own summary of what Wikiquote records.