Presses Quotes - Page 27

• If you think there is freedom of the press in the United States, I tell you there is no freedom of the press... They come out with the cheap shot. The press should be ashamed of itself. They should come to both sides of the issue and hear both sides and let the American people make up their minds

  Bill Moyers

  Equality, Thinking, Media Control

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• The press is so powerful in its image-making role, it can make the criminal look like he's a the victim and make the victim look like he's the criminal. This is the press, an irresponsible press. It will make the criminal look like he's the victim and make the victim look like he's the criminal. If you aren't careful, the newspapers will have you hating the people who are being oppressed and loving the people who are doing the oppressing.

  Malcolm X

  Powerful, Hate, Media Control

  Malcolm X's speech at the Audubon Ballroom in Harlem (December 13, 1964) as quoted in "Malcolm X Speaks: Selected Speeches and Statements" edited by George Breitman (p. 93), 1965.

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• The press, or at least most of it, has lost the passion, the outrage, and the sense of mission that once drove reporters to defy authority and tell the truth.

  Chris Hedges

  Passion, Media Control, Telling The Truth

  Chris Hedges, Laila Al-Arian (2013). “Collateral Damage: America's War Against Iraqi Civilians”, p.18, Nation Books

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• To your request of my opinion of the manner in which a newspaper should be conducted, so as to be most useful, I should answer, "by restraining it to true facts & sound principles only." Yet I fear such a paper would find few subscribers. It is a melancholy truth, that a suppression of the press could not more completely deprive the nation of it's benefits, than is done by it's abandoned prostitution to falsehood.

  Thomas Jefferson

  Media Control, Sound, Principles

  Thomas Jefferson, Joyce Appleby, Terence Ball (1999). “Jefferson: Political Writings”, p.274, Cambridge University Press

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• Is the relinquishment of the trial by jury and the liberty of the press necessary for your liberty? Will the abandonment of your most sacred rights tend to the security of your liberty? Liberty, the greatest of all earlthy blessings - give us that precious jewel, and you may take every things else! . . . Guard with jealous attention the public liberty. Suspect every one who approaches that jewel.

  Patrick Henry

  Freedom, Jealous, Blessing

  "Shall Liberty or Empire Be Sought?". Speech in the Virginia Ratifying Convention, June 5, 1788.

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• But the fact being once established, that the press is impotent when it abandons itself to falsehood, I leave to others to restore it to its strength, by recalling it within the pale of truth. Within that, it is a noble institution, equally the friend of science and of civil liberty.

  Thomas Jefferson

  Freedom, Liberty, Noble

  Thomas Jefferson, Joyce Appleby, Terence Ball (1999). “Jefferson: Political Writings”, p.273, Cambridge University Press

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• ... the United States, for generations, has sustained two parallel but opposed states of mind about military atrocities and human rights: one of U.S. benevolence, generally held by the public, and the other of ends-justify-the-means brutality sponsored by counterinsurgency specialists. Normally the specialists carry out their actions in remote locations with little notice in the national press. That allows the public to sustain its faith in a just America, while hard-nosed security and economic interests are still protected in secret.

  Robert Parry

  Military, War, Mean

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• War seems to me to be a mean, contemptible thing: I would rather be hacked in pieces than take part in such an abominable business. And yet so high, in spite of everything, is my opinion of the human race that I believe this bogey would have disappeared long ago, had the sound sense of the nations not been systematically corrupted by commercial and political interests acting through the schools and the Press

  Albert Einstein

  War, Believe, School

  Albert Einstein (2011). “The World As I See It”, p.15, Open Road Media

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• The fact is that every war suffers a kind of progressive degradation with every month that it continues, because such things as individual liberty and a truthful press are simply not compatible with military efficiency.

  George Orwell

  Military, War, Suffering

  George Orwell (2016). “Homage to Catalonia / Down and Out in Paris and London”, p.190, Houghton Mifflin Harcourt

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• War, we have come to believe, is a spectator sport. The military and the press have turned war into a vast video arcade game. Its very essence-death-is hidden from public view.

  Chris Hedges

  Sports, Military, War

  Chris Hedges (2005). “Losing Moses on the Freeway: The 10 Commandments in America”, p.97, Simon and Schuster

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• In the press grandstand where I watched Discovery rise against the cloudless sky, the media hit the abort button on cynicism. The Earth shook to the sounds of man, three miles away. The candle lit. . . only someone stripped of awe can leave a launch untouched.

  Jonathan Alter

  Men, Media, Sky

  Jonathan Alter (2008). “Between the Lines: A View Inside American Politics, People, and Culture”

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• Ah! What avails the classic bent
  And what the cultured word,
  Against the undoctored incident
  That actually occurred?
  And what is Art whereto we press
  Through paint and prose and rhyme-
  When Nature in her nakedness
  Defeats us every time?

  Rudyard Kipling

  Art, Real, Classic

  Rudyard Kipling (1994). “The Collected Poems of Rudyard Kipling”, p.352, Wordsworth Editions

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• Reality is a cruel and unintuitive place with frustrating gameplay mechanics.
  (Press X to thanklessly toil your life away)

  Yahtzee Croshaw

  Real, Toil, Mechanic

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• People are always asking me what my lyrics mean. Does it mean this, does it mean that, that's all anybody wants to know. F**k them, darling. I say what any decent poet would say if you dared ask him to analyze his work: If you see it, dear, then it's there. ... I think my melodies are superior to my lyrics. ... I was never too keen on the British music press. They've called us a supermarket hype, and they used to suggest that we didn't write our own songs.

  Freddie Mercury

  Song, Writing, Mean

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• The Brahmins say that in their books there are many predictions of times in which it will rain. But press those books as strongly as you can, you can not get out of them a drop of water. So you can not get out of all the books that contain the best precepts the smallest good deed.

  Leo Tolstoy

  Rain, Book, Reading

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• If another Messiah was born he could hardly do so much good as the printing-press.

  Georg C. Lichtenberg

  Printing, Born, Messiah

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• Whenever the press quits abusing me I know Im in the wrong pew. I dont mind it because when they throw bricks at meIm a pretty good shot myself and I usually throw em back at em.

  Harry S. Truman

  Mind, Ems, Bricks

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• The right of freely examining public characters and measures, and of free communication among the people thereon . . . has ever been justly deemed the only effectual guardian of every other right.

  James Madison

  Communication, Character, People

  Virginia. General Assembly. House of Delegates, J. W. Randolph, James Madison (1850). “The Virginia Report of 1799-1800: Touching the Alien and Sedition Laws; Together with the Virginia Resolutions of December 21, 1798, Including the Debate and Proceedings Thereon in the House of Delegates of Virginia and Other Documents Illustrative of the Report and Resolutions”, p.23

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• It is the Press which has corrupted our political morals - and it is to the Press we must look for the means of our political regeneration.

  Alexander Hamilton

  Mean, Political, Looks

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• During the course of administration, and in order to disturb it, the artillery of the press has been levelled against us, charged with whatsoever its licentiousness could devise or dare. These abuses of an institution so important to freedom and science are deeply to be regretted, inasmuch as they tend to lessen its usefulness and to sap its safety.

  Thomas Jefferson

  Order, Safety, Abuse

  Thomas Jefferson, Richard Holland Johnston, Thomas Jefferson Memorial Association of the United States “The Writings of Thomas Jefferson”

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• To the haranguers of the populace among the ancients, succeed among the moderns your writers of political pamphlets and news-papers, and your coffee-house talkers.

  Benjamin Franklin

  Coffee, House, Political

  Benjamin Franklin (1950). “Letters to the Press, 1758-1775”

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• If by the liberty of the press were understood merely the liberty of discussing the propriety of public measures and political opinions, let us have as much of it as you please: But if it means the liberty of affronting, calumniating and defaming one another, I, for my part, own myself willing to part with my share of it, whenever our legislators shall please so to alter the law and shall chearfully consent to exchange my liberty of abusing others for the privilege of not being abused myself.

  Benjamin Franklin

  Mean, Political Opinions, Law

  Benjamin Franklin, William Temple Franklin (1818). “Memoirs of the life and writings of Benjamin Franklin ...”, p.304, Printed for H. Colborn

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• Newspapers . . . serve as chimnies to carry off noxious vapors and smoke.

  Thomas Jefferson

  Vapor, Newspapers, Smoke

  Thomas Jefferson (1829). “Memoir, correspondence, and miscellanies from the papers of T. Jefferson”, p.491

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• To get the inestimable good that freedom of the press assures one must know how to submit to the inevitable evil it gives rise to.

  Alexis de Tocqueville

  Evil, Giving, Inevitable

  Alexis de Tocqueville (2012). “Democracy in America”, p.175, University of Chicago Press

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• I avow that I do not hold that complete and instantaneous love for the freedom of the press that one accords to things whose nature is unqualifiedly good. I love it out of consideration for the evils it prevents much more than for the good it does.

  Alexis de Tocqueville

  Evil, Doe, Consideration

  Alexis de Tocqueville (2012). “Democracy in America”, p.172, University of Chicago Press

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