The press must be free. It has always been so, and much evil has been corrected by it. If government finds itself annoyed by it, let it examine its own conduct, and it will find the cause.
I, like every soldier of America, will die for the freedom of the press, even for the freedom of newspapers that call me everything that is a good deal less than being a gentleman.
To limit the press is to insult the nation; to prohibit the reading of certain books is to declare the inhabitants to be either fools or slaves: such a prohibition ought to fill them with disdain.
If you want to rip the heart out of a democracy, you go after the facts. That’s what modern authoritarians do. You lie. All the time. Then you say it’s your opponents and the journalists who lie.
Nowadays truth is the greatest news.
Reason can and will prevail; but of course it can only prevail with publicity—pitiless, blatant publicity. You have got to make the people of the United States and of the world know what is going on. . . . You have got to use every field of publicity to force the truth into their ears, and before their eyes.
I’m with you on the free press. It’s the newspapers I can’t stand.
Our papers have one peculiarity—it is American—it exists nowhere else—their irreverence. May they never lose and never modify it. They are irreverent toward pretty much everything, but where they laugh one good king to death, they laugh a thousand cruel and infamous shams and superstitions into the grave, and the account is squared. Irreverence is the champion of liberty and its only sure defense.
The whole point of muckraking, apart from all the jokes, is to try to do something about what you’ve been writing about. You may not be able to change the world, but at least you can embarrass the guilty.
The people must know before they can act, and there is no educator to compare with the press.
Declare to [the editors] . . . that I shall never tolerate the newspapers to say or do anything against my interests; that they may publish a few little articles with just a little poison in them, but that one fine morning somebody will shut their mouths.
The moment we no longer have a free press, anything can happen. What makes it possible for a totalitarian or any other dictatorship to rule is that people are not informed; how can you have an opinion if you are not informed? If everybody always lies to you, the consequence is not that you believe the lies, but rather that nobody believes anything any longer. . . . And a people that no longer can believe anything cannot make up its mind. It is deprived not only of its capacity to act but also of its capacity to think and to judge. And with such a people you can then do what you please.
An honest, fearless press is the public’s first protection against gangsterism, local or international.
Many wearing rapiers are afraid of goosequills.
With freedom of the press, nations are not sure of going toward justice and peace. But without it, they are sure of not going there.
It has forever been thus: So long as men write what they think, then all of the other freedoms—all of them—may remain intact. And it is then that writing becomes a weapon of truth, an article of faith, an act of courage.
Give light and the people will find their own way.
