NEWSPAPERS QUOTES II

quotations about newspapers

Newspapers are being read all around. The point is not, of course, to glean new information, but rather to coax the mind out of its sleep-induced introspective temper.

ALAIN DE BOTTON

The Pleasures and Sorrows of Work

Tags: Alain de Botton


Nothing could be older than the daily news, nothing deader than yesterday's newspaper.

EDWARD ABBEY

A Voice Crying in the Wilderness (Vox Clamantis in Deserto)

Tags: Edward Abbey


To look at the paper is to raise a seashell to one's ear and to be overwhelmed by the roar of humanity.

ALAIN DE BOTTON

The Pleasures and Sorrows of Work

Tags: Alain de Botton


A newspaper, like a theatre, must mainly owe its continuance in life to the fact that it pleases many persons; and in order to please many persons it will, unconsciously perhaps, respond to their several tastes, reflect their various qualities, and reproduce their views. In a certain sense it is evolved out of the community that absorbs it, and, therefore, partaking of the character of the community, while it may retain many merits and virtues, it will display itself, as in some respects ignorant, trivial, narrow, and vulgar.

WILLIAM WINTER

The Press and the Stage


When woman has a newspaper which fear and favor cannot touch, then it will be that she can freely write her own thoughts.

SUSAN B. ANTHONY

remarks to the Woman's Auxiliary Congress of the Public Press Congress, May 23, 1893

Tags: Susan B. Anthony


The average newspaper, especially of the better sort, has the intelligence of a hillbilly evangelist, the courage of a rat, the fairness of a prohibitionist boob-jumper, the information of a high school janitor, the taste of a designer of celluloid valentines, and the honor of a police-station lawyer.

H. L. MENCKEN

attributed, Insults: A Practical Anthology of Scathing Remarks and Acid Portraits

Tags: H. L. Mencken


The careful reader of a few good newspapers can learn more in a year than most scholars do in their great libraries.

F. B. SANBORN

attributed, Forty Thousand Quotations, Prose and Poetical


I became a journalist because I did not want to rely on newspapers for information.

CHRISTOPHER HITCHENS

Love, Poverty and War: Journeys and Essays

Tags: Christopher Hitchens


Before this century shall run out, journalism will be the whole press. Mankind will write their book day by day, hour by hour, page by page. Thought will spread abroad with the rapidity of light--instantly conceived, instantly written, instantly understood at the extremities of the earth.

ALPHONSE DE LAMARTINE

attributed, Forty Thousand Quotations, Prose and Poetical

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Even the correspondent of a newspaper has occasional scruples.

J. RUSSELL YOUNG

attributed, Day's Collacon


A lady does not read the newspaper. The society pages, perhaps, or the theater news. Not this filth.

CASSANDRA CLARE

Clockwork Angel

Tags: Cassandra Clare


We expect some new disaster with each newspaper we read.

ABRAHAM LINCOLN

speech at Bloomington, May 29, 1856

Tags: Abraham Lincoln


Only a newspaper! Quick read, quick lost, Who sums the treasure that it carries hence? Torn, trampled under feet, who counts thy cost, Star-eyed intelligence?

MARY CLEMMER AMES

The Journalist

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A newspaper is not only a collective propagandist and a collective agitator, it is also a collective organiser.

VLADIMIR LENIN

"The Plan For an All-Russia Political Newspaper", What Is To Be Done?

Tags: Vladimir Lenin


Having learned to write news, I now distrust newspapers as a source of information, and I am often surprised by historians who take them as primary source for knowing what really happened. I think newspapers should be read for information about how contemporaries construed events, rather than for reliable knowledge of events themselves.

ROBERT DARNTON

The Case for Books: Past, Present, and Future


The way to prevent irregular interpositions of the people is to give them full information of their affairs through the channel of the public papers, and to contrive that those papers should penetrate the whole mass of the people. The basis of our governments 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.

THOMAS JEFFERSON

letter to Colonel Edward Carrington, January 16, 1787

Tags: Thomas Jefferson


Newspapers will ultimately engross all literature.

ALPHONSE DE LAMARTINE

attributed, Forty Thousand Quotations, Prose and Poetical

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Have you noticed that life, real honest to goodness life, with murders and catastrophes and fabulous inheritances, happens almost exclusively in newspapers?

JEAN ANOUILH

attributed, News Culture

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Printer's ink is the great apostle of progress, whose pulpit is the press.

HORACE GREELEY

attributed, Forty Thousand Quotations, Prose and Poetical

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Carried down my last number to the Advocate. They will not publish the letters I wish. So much for the freedom of that press.

CHARLES FRANCIS ADAMS

diary, February 13, 1837

Tags: Charles Francis Adams, Sr.