If all mankind minus one were of one opinion, mankind would be no more justified in silencing that one person than he, if he had the power, would be justified in silencing mankind. – John Stuart Mill, On Liberty, 1859
Obscenity is not a quality inherent in a book or picture, but is solely and exclusively a contribution of the reading mind, and hence cannot be defined in terms of the qualities of a book or picture. – Theodore Schroeder
The end of poetry is not to create a physical condition which shall give pleasure to the mind… The end of poetry is not an after-effect, not a pleasurable memory of itself, but an immediate, constant and even unpleasant insistence upon itself. – Laura Riding
Well, a lot of people go to Shakespeare to recognize the quotations. – James Aswell, 1936 [Popularized in 1949 by Evan Esar as “Now we sit through Shak
