Because I can say what I want and feel how I feel...

...and there's not much you can do about it.

Every year at the Banned Books Week Readathon, we sell buttons and bookmarks with quotes about censorship. Our best seller:

Take away the right to say "fuck" and you take away the right to say "fuck the government." ~Lenny Bruce

So today, I thought I'd share with you some pearls of wisdom in honor of Banned Books Week. I strongly recommend you share your favorite with someone today. I also strongly recommend that you exercise you're right to say whatever the fuck you want to. Pick your favorite bad word and say it. Loudly.

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, On Liberty, 1859


The fact is that censorship always defeats its own purpose, for it creates, in the end, the kind of society that is incapable of exercising real discretion. ~Henry Steele Commager


The only valid censorship of ideas is the right of people not to listen. ~Tommy Smothers


Censorship reflects society's lack of confidence in itself. It is a hallmark of an authoritarian regime. ~Potter Stewart


We have a natural right to make use of our pens as of our tongue, at our peril, risk and hazard. ~Voltaire, Dictionnaire Philosophique, 1764


The dirtiest book of all is the expurgated book. ~Walt Whitman


Think for yourselves and let others enjoy the privilege to do so, too. ~Voltaire


Books won't stay banned. They won't burn. Ideas won't go to jail. In the long run of history, the censor and the inquisitor have always lost. The only weapon against bad ideas is better ideas. ~Alfred Whitney Griswold, New York Times, 24 February 1959


Nature knows no indecencies; man invents them. ~Mark Twain, Notebook, 1935


What progress we are making. In the Middle Ages they would have burned me. Now they are content with burning my books. ~Sigmund Freud, 1933


Wherever they burn books they will also, in the end, burn human beings. ~Heinrich Heine, Almansor, 1823


Every burned book enlightens the world. ~Ralph Waldo Emerson


The paper burns, but the words fly away. ~Akiba ben Joseph


Did you ever hear anyone say, "That work had better be banned because I might read it and it might be very damaging to me?" ~Joseph Henry Jackson


To choose a good book, look in an inquisitor’s prohibited list. ~John Aikin


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

And because I CAN say so, my word today is: FUCK!