Freedom Of The Press Quotes

The very purpose of a Bill of Rights was to withdraw certain subjects from the vicissitudes of political controversy. One’s right to life, liberty and property, to free speech, a free press, freedom of worship and assembly may not be submitted to vote; they depend on no elections.

The liberty of the press is a blessing when we are inclined to write against others, and a calamity when we find ourselves overborne by the multitude of our assailants.

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.

Where the press is free and every man able to read, all is safe.

Knowledge will forever govern ignorance; and a people who mean to be their own governors must arm themselves with the power which knowledge gives.

We think we have got freedom of the press. When one millionaire has ten newspapers and ten million people have no newspapers – that is not freedom of the press.

Freedom of the Press, if it means anything at all, means the freedom to criticize and oppose

There is an urgent need to-day for the citizens of a democracy to think well. It is not enough to have freedom of the Press and parliamentary institutions. Our difficulties are due partly to our own stupidity, partly to the exploitation of that stupidity, and partly to our own prejudices and personal desires.

If the true freedom of the press is to decide for itself what to publish and when to publish it, the true responsibility of the press must be to assert and defend that freedom… What the press in America needs is less inhibition, not more restraint.

Those who suppress freedom always do so in the name of law and order.”
– John V. Lindsay
“No government power can be abused long. Mankind will not bear it.

We are, heart and soul, friends to the freedom of the press…It is a precious pest, and a necessary mischief, and there would be no liberty without it.

As someone who is in awe and grateful every day to be in a country where freedom of the press, free speech and free elections are a way of life, I am wowed, amazed and excited by the opportunity to moderate a 2012 presidential debate.

A free press can, of course, be good or bad, but, most certainly without freedom, the press will never be anything but bad.

Without either the first or second amendment, we would have no liberty; the first allows us to find out what’s happening, the second allows us to do something about it! The second will be taken away first, followed by the first and then the rest of our freedoms.

Despotism and freedom of the press cannot exist together.

At any given moment there is an orthodoxy, a body of ideas which it is assumed that all right-thinking people will accept without question.

When one makes a Revolution, one cannot mark time; one must always go forward–or go back