50 Press Quotes

Hastiness and superficiality are the psychic diseases of the twentieth century, and more than anywhere else this disease is reflected in the press.

The failures of the press have contributed immensely to the emergence of a talk-show nation, in which public discourse is reduced to ranting and raving and posturing. We now have a mainstream press whose news agenda is increasingly influenced by this netherworld.

I look forward to these confrontations with the press to kind of balance up the nice and pleasant things that come to me as president.

The press must grow day in and day out - it is our Party's sharpest and most powerful weapon.

I know the British press is very attached to the lobby system. It lets the journalists and the politicians feel proud of their traditional freedoms while giving the reader as much of the truth as they think is good for him.

Such as it is, the press has become the greatest power within the Western World, more powerful than the legislature, the executive and judiciary. One would like to ask; by whom has it been elected and to whom is it responsible?

'Press passes can't be that hard to come by if the White House allows that old Arab Helen Thomas to sit within yards of the president'

Now that I've got the will of the people at my back, I'm going to start enforcing the one-question rule. That was three questions.

Whenever I was upset by something in the papers, [Jack] always told me to be more tolerant, like a horse flicking away flies in the summer.

The liberty of the press is the palladium of all the civil, political, and religious rights of an Englishman.

The very hirelings of the press, whose trade it is to buoy up the spirits of the people ... have uttered falsehoods so long, they have played off so many tricks, that their budget seems, at last, to be quite empty.

Only in democratic countries is there the beginning of a suspicion that the old axioms about the press being the bulwark of liberty is something that affects the daily life of the people--that it is a living warning rather than an ancient wisecrack. A people that wants to be free must arm itself with a free press.

I wish you would have given me this written question ahead of time, so I could plan for it... You know, I just - I'm sure something will pop into my head here in the midst of this press conference, with all the pressure of trying to come up with an answer, but it hadn't yet.

The basis of our government being the opinion of the people, the very first object should be to keep that right; and were it left to me to decide whether we should have a government without newspapers, or newspapers without a government, I should not hesitate a moment to prefer the latter.

Milne: No matter how imperfect things are, if you've got a free press everything is correctable, and without it everything is concealable. Ruth: I'm with you on the free press. It's the newspapers I can't stand.

'Freedom of the press is the mortar that binds together the bricks of democracy -- and it is also the open window embedded in those bricks.' -- Speech at the UN's World Press Freedom Day, 3 May 2001

They're also a valuable supplement to the daily press, but like any new breakthrough, there is a dark side. (February 2005)

I du believe with all my soul In the gret Press's freedom, To pint the people to the goal An' in the traces lead 'em.

(after playing 'Another Black Friday' by The C.U.B.S.) - It's called 'Another Black Friday' and the press of it has been good as far as I can tell: 'the best production at the present time','a rise to new musical directions', 'a brilliant fusion of body and brain' ... I don't know, that sounds like a motorcycle accident.

A free and independent press is essential to the health of a functioning democracy. It serves to inform the voting public on matters relevant to its well-being. Why they've stopped doing that is a mystery. I mean, 300 camera crews outside a courthouse to see what Kobe Bryant is wearing when the judge sets his hearing date, while false information used to send our country to war goes unchecked? What the fuck happened?

I love watching the White House press conferences; they're very enjoyable. I love watching talented journalists who spent their entire lives to get the point where they're in the White House press corps, only to find out they're dictation machines where the White House will tell them what to say. But I'm watching it today and the strangest thing happened: today was the first press conference since they released the President's Vietnam service record and suddenly, it's like there's a whole new attitude. I have just one question for the press corps: Where the fuck have you been? You're starting to ask questions now? Now? All of a sudden, they've got questions and it's about his Vietnam service. Guys, you're like eight wars behind. Hey! I heard there was a break-in at the Watergate! You might want to check in on that!

When EMI invites a group of journalists to the Royal Academy of Music, in London, for a one-off listen to Kate Bush's new album, they are sending a clear signal - this album is not to be dismissed lightly.

I don't want to spread the peanut butter of my personality on the moldy bread of the commercial press.

It tackles a wonderful subject without preening, and brings it off unassertively - so unassertively that the movie is in danger of being overlooked. (Variety has already dismissed it as something 'for a very limited audience.') We're getting to the point where the press assumes that movie audiences won't be willing to bring anything to a picture, and warns them off.

Basically there's a gulf between truth and untruth, I don't want to be too mathematical about it, because I'm not very good at maths. But it's a divide between, I dunno, a film and a cartoon. I've just become this cartoon character. I try not to follow it, but when you see pictures of yourself that have been photo-shopped to show you doing something you didn't:. that's wrong. It's my worst nightmare - and being misquoted, too, especially as I'm so precious about words.

You've got to understand... these days I just can't afford to get involved [with the press]. People - they turn on you... on me. They write horrible things, deliberately twisting my words.

Mageeba: Do you know what I mean by a relatively free press, Mr. Wagner? Wagner: Not exactly, sir, no. Mageeba: I mean a free press which is edited by one of my relatives.

Of the Corporation of the Goosequill--of the Press, my boy,...of the fourth estate...There she is-the great engine-she never sleeps. She has her ambassadors in every quarter of the world-her couriers upon every road. Her officers march along with armies, andher envoys walk into statesmen's cabinets. They are ubiquitous.

von Humboldt (seeing a newspaper containing slanderous falsehoods against Jefferson on the President's desk) : Why do you not have the fellow hung who dares to write these abominable lies? Jefferson : What! hang the guardians of the public morals? No, sir, - rather would I protect the spirit of freedom which dictates even that degree of abuse. Put that paper into your pocket, my good friend, carry it with you to Europe, and when you hear any one doubt the reality of American freedom, show them that paper, and tell them where you found it. Humboldt : But is it not shocking that virtuous characters should be defamed? Jefferson : Let their actions refute such libels. Believe me, virtue is not long darkened by the clouds of calumny; and the temporary pain which it causes is infinitely overweighed by the safety it insures against degeneracy in the principles and conduct of public functionaries. When a man assumes a public trust, he should consider himself as public property.

'The press is just a bunch of rubbish anyway. So - you know - they never get a story right anyways, and it's always rumors and gossip and, um, over-sensationalized shit.' - Christina Aguilera: Music Box Biographical Collection

'The British music press has taken a beating the last couple of nights from us (...) but they're fucking wankers, they eat shit in the bath.' -London, 1978

newspapers ask intimate questions want confessions they reach into my head to steal the glory of my story

Grant me thirty years of equal division of inheritances and a free press, and I will provide you with a republic.

The press is not only free, it is powerful. That power is ours. It is the proudest that man can enjoy.

Freedom of the press is not an end in itself but a means to the end of [achieving] a free society.

Once a paper admits any principle of censorship for survival, the we-don't-want-to-do-it-but-we-don't-want-to-lose-the-printer kind of censorship, it jeopardizes the integrity of its editorial principle. It's better to print and be damned, because you'll be damned anyway.

e've always had our run-ins with the paparazzi. That hasn't changed. They are very ambitious. They're looking for God knows what. (2004)

She was a spokesman on all sorts of issues: freedom of the press, freedom of religion, the adoptability of disadvantaged children, the future of China, especially the battle for women's rights, for education. If you followed in her trail, as I did, you were put in touch with almost every major movement in the United States - intellectual, social, and political.

All over the world, wherever there are capitalists, freedom of the press means freedom to buy up newspapers, to buy writers, to bribe, buy and fake 'public opinion' for the benefit of the bourgeoisie.

In order to enjoy the inestimable benefits that the liberty of the press ensures, it is necessary to submit to the inevitable evils it creates:

It is a very comfortable reflection to the lovers of liberty, that this peculiar privilege of Britain is of a kind that cannot easily be wrested from us, but must last as long as our government remains, in any degree, free and independent. It is seldom, that liberty of any kind is lost all at once. Slavery has so frightful an aspect to men accustomed to freedom, that it must steal upon them by degrees, and must disguise itself in a thousand shapes, in order to be received. But, if the liberty of the press ever be lost, it must be lost at once. The general laws against sedition and libelling are at present as strong as they possibly can be made. Nothing can impose a farther restraint, but either the clapping an Imprimatur upon the press, or the giving to the court very large discretionary powers to punish whatever displeases them. But these concessions would be such a bare-faced violation of liberty, that they will probably be the last efforts of a despotic government. We may conclude, that the liberty of Britain is gone for ever when these attempts shall succeed.

The eyebrows have it - An interview with the Sunday Times