Skip to content
quotesby

About this quote

What does it mean?
Censors feel pressured to keep expanding their control to justify their existence, similar to other bureaucrats.
In plain terms
Censors keep finding new things to ban to prove they are doing work.
What can you take from it?
Power structures often expand unnecessarily to justify their own existence.

Where it applies

  • government oversight
  • media regulation
  • content moderation

Putting it to work

  • monitor censorship trends
  • question authority overreach
  • protect free speech

Questions to consider

  • Why do institutions expand?
  • How do we check censorship?

Another view

Some regulation may be necessary despite the risk of overreach.

More from Wilfrid Sheed

  1. For now, I'm supposing that all movements are equal, which they're not, except in this respect: that none of them gives a damn about artists beyond their immed…

    Permalink to quote #12
  2. Today's novelist is not only limited by the thin subject matter of personal experience, but by the pinched clinical conventions of the Health generation. Faced…

    Permalink to quote #14
  3. The rational man may talk a good game about suicide, but reason must give way to obsession and finally squalor before he can actually do it.

    Permalink to quote #11

Related quotes

  1. Bureaucracy, the rule of no one, has become the modern form of despotism.

    Mary McCarthyMary McCarthy quote #15
  2. Rance: You may speak freely in front of me. I represent Her Majesty's Government. Your immediate superiors in madness. I'm from the Commissioners. Prentice: Wh…

    Joe OrtonJoe Orton quote #29
  3. 'They don't gotta burn the books they just remove 'em'

    Zack de la RochaZack de la Rocha quote #36