Coisas que merecem ser lidas - sobre as censuras

De The Censor in Each of Us:

The censorship was introduced at a time of economic stagnation. Once money moved, and there was free trade between Ireland and England and the possibility of Ireland entering what was called the Common Market, it seemed that the books would have to come, too. And pressure from the outside world mattered. The country became deeply concerned about its image, and that concern became greater than the need to control what its citizens read. But, for all of us who lived through that change, a change I witnessed again in Spain, in 1975, when the dictator Franco died, it meant that we understood two things.

First, that the urge to riot in a theatre to stop actors being heard, the urge to ban books, the urge to threaten to cut subsidy are almost built into our nature, they lurk always in the shadows, especially in societies where there are divisions and pressures and fears or sudden and uneasy change, but maybe they lurk everywhere.

Second, the need to resist these urges, urges that can be both shadowy and substantial, both threatening and pressing, which weaken and poison the richness and potential of our lives, requires single-mindedness, vigilance, cunning, knowledge that the enemy is within as well as without, an absolute belief in the idea of the glittering mind and the power of the shifting and uncertain image, and a belief in the challenge of the word and the often awkward presence of the new. The doctrine that these things are fundamental to us, to our way of living in the world, to our humanity, means then that we must work, using examples from the past, toward the right for others, as well as ourselves, to be let alone to imagine, to write, to read, to share, and to be heard.