Censorship feeds the dirty mind more than the four-letter word itself.

Cavett’s line argues that suppression can be more psychologically provocative than the supposedly offensive material itself. By treating certain words or ideas as forbidden, censors invite audiences to dwell on them, to imagine lurid meanings, and to invest them with extra power. The “dirty mind” is thus not created by the word but by the anxious, moralizing attention paid to it. The remark fits a broader free-speech critique: censorship often backfires, amplifying curiosity and sensationalism while failing to address underlying attitudes. It also satirizes prudishness—suggesting that scandal is frequently manufactured by the act of policing language rather than by language’s actual content.