Obscenity Quotations

Sex and obscenity are not synonymous. Obscene material is material which deals with sex in a manner appealing to prurient interest.

I shall not today attempt further to define the kinds of material but I know it when I see it.

My English text is chaste, and all licentious passages are left in the decent obscurity of a learned language.

Mr. Page regrets having uttered an obscenity in open court. Sixty days to serve in jail is disproportionately severe relative to the transgression.

Since obscenity is the truth of our passion today, it is the only stuff of art - or almost the only stuff.

Janet Reno did not feel comfortable enforcing obscenity laws. She didn't want to do it, and nobody made her do it.

Well, in the 1990 reauthorization legislation, there was a phrase that said we do not fund obscenity as defined by a court of law.

Shocking writing is like murder: the questions the jury must decide are the questions of motive and intent.

What is obscenity? And to whom?

We did a show in New York the other day, and after we played The Obscenity Prayer , a woman came up to me and said, 'I'm buying your record as soon as it comes out, because the Dixie Chicks can kiss my (expletive), too!'

Well, he's doubled his own obscenity level, ... As they say in Boston, $63 million is wicked obscene. Here in New York City, we've got a different word to describe it.

We are of the view that Indian movies spread obscenity and vulgarity. These (Indian) movies cannot be watched with family members and as such we will be opposing their exhibition in Pakistan.

People that watch programming now watch it either on a satellite dish or a cable. Very few people still just really, literally watch over an antenna. So for there to be this vast opportunity for programmers to put on whatever it is they want to put on with no accountability, and for me to have to face a license renewal and an FCC who is very well focused right now on obscenity and things like that -- I mean, I just think those issues need to be discussed.

Executive compensation is an obscenity that is thrust upon this entire society.

They are not violating any obscenity law; they are not illegal. They fall under the authority of the State Liquor Control Board, which can suspend their license if they violate the law.

Everybody says sex is obscene. The only true obscenity is war.

The goal is to stop the obscenity in the store window. You don't advertise with soft porn. Clearly that's violating community standards.

This is a classic example of a censorship crusade by local government bureaucrats who are relying on their own subjective definition of obscenity to arrest someone even before any court has found that this Web site is illegal. What right do Polk County officials have to decide what people who live in Berlin and London and Hong Kong and New York access in the privacy of their own homes?

I shall not attempt further to define the kinds of material I understand to be embraced within that shorthand description (of pornography), and perhaps I could never succeed in intelligibly doing so. But I know it when I see it, and the motion picture involved in this case is not that.

Pornography and obscenity...work by specialism and fragmentation. They deal with a figure without a ground -- situations in which the human factor is suppressed in favor of sensations and kicks.

History proves there is no better advertisement for a book than to condemn it for obscenity.

Sex and obscenity are not synonymous.

I'd heard that Lenny Bruce used a lot of profanity and obscenities in his act, and I was curious.

It showed a kind of obscenity you see only in nature, an obscenity so extreme that it dissolves imperceptibly into beauty.

What good is an obscenity trial except to popularize literature?

Obscenity can be found in every book except the telephone directory.

I am passionately opposed to the death penalty for anyone . . . I think, myself, that it is an obscenity . . .

Indecency, vulgarity, obscenity - these are strictly confined to man; he invented them. Among the higher animals there is no trace of them. They hide nothing. They are not ashamed.