PRESS

Related Subjects: Books, Columnists, News, Printing, Propaganda

1. The stupendous Fourth Estate, whose wide world-embracing influences what eye can take in?—CARLYLE, On Boswell's Life of Johnson
   

2. Burke said there were Three Estates in Parliament; but, in the Reporters' Gallery yonder, there sat a Fourth Estate more important far than them all. It is not a figure of speech, or witty saying; it is a literal fact,—very momentous to us in these times.—CARLYLE, Heroes & Hero-Worship
   

3. Journalists have always been our most old-fashioned class, being too busy with the news of the day to lay aside the mental habits of fifty years before.—FRANK M. COLBY, Constrained Attitudes
   

4. Tilf ord Moots wuz over t' th' Henryville poor farm th' other day t' see an ole friend o' his thet used t' publish a newspaper thet pleased ever'buddy.—KIN HUBBARD
   

5. An editor cannot always act as he would prefer. He is often obliged to bow to the wishes of the public in unimportant matters. Politics are the most important thing in life—for a newspaper.—IBSEN, An Enemy of the People
   

6. Newspaper publishing and business involvement on a large scale go hand in hand with the result that the press is becoming more and more a spokesman for special interests.—HAROLD L. ICKES, America's House of Lords
   

7. Local newspapers, those in the counties and smaller towns, may be affected by local friendships and prejudices and interests, but generally speaking, in the national field and with regard to matters affecting the general welfare of the nation, they are sound at heart. This is a great consolation in these days of an arrogant, unscrupulous, and socially destructive, even if small, newspaper clique close to the apex of the economic pyramid.—HAROLD L. ICKES, America's House of Lords
   

8. The newspapers have a well-developed and thoroughly understood technique. They assert a monopoly of the right of criticism . . . Upon the head of the temerarious critic the thunderbolts of a Gutenbergian Jove will be hurled not only to annihilate him, if possible, but also to declare a savage warning to others who might be so rash as to question the truth or the finality of a newspaper utterance.—HAROLD L. ICKES, America's House of Lords
   

9. Publicists have long known both of the existence and the usefulness of this [newspaper] power. It has been used to elect and defeat candidates for public office, to destroy public confidence in administrative and legislative proposals, to stampede a nation into a prohibition hysteria and to reverse the majorities fourteen years later. The use as well as the misuse of information has
   made the power of suggestion the decisive force in world affairs. It can cause or prevent war. It can strengthen or destroy a democracy. It can build or wreck a nation.—HAROLD L. ICKES, America's House of Lords
   

10. American journalism is not merely a Big Business, it is a semi-monopolistic one. In many important cities the public has to depend upon one morning newspaper. In 1934, 82 per cent of all the dailies had a complete monopoly in their communities.—HAROLD L. ICKES, America's House of Lords
    

11. The liberty of the press is the Palladium of all the civil, political,
    and religious rights of an Englishman.—JUNIUS
    

12. Newspapers always excite curiosity. No one ever lays one down without a feeling of disappointment.—CHARLES LAMB, Detached Thoughts on Books
    and Reading
    

13. All successful newspapers are ceaselessly querulous and bellicose. They never defend anyone or anything if they can help it; if the job is forced upon them, they tackle it by denouncing someone or something else.—H. L. MENCKEN, Prejudices
    

14. "The Press!—What is the Press?" I cried;
    When thus a wondrous voice replied:
    "In me all human knowledge dwells;
    The oracle of oracles,
    Past, present, future, I reveal,
    Or in oblivion's silence seal;
    What I preserve can perish never,
    What I forego is lost forever."—JAMES MONTGOMERY, The Press
    

15. The newspapers! Sir, they are the most villainous, licentious, abominable, infernal—Not that I ever read them! No, I make it a rule never to look into a newspaper.—SHERIDAN, The Critic
    

16. A newspaper is indeed like a woman or a politician. When it is young, honest, and full of ideals, it is attractive, trusted, and full of the possibilities of power. Powerful men see this, see its uses, and so seek to possess it. And some of them do get and keep it, and they use, abuse, and finally ruin it.—LINCOLN STEFFENS,
    Autobiography
    

17. Of the Corporation of the Goosequill—of the Press, . . . 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, and her envoys walk into statesmen's cabinets. They are ubiquitous.—THACKERAY, Pendennis
    

18. A newspaper is a private enterprise, owing nothing to the public, which grants it no franchise. It is, therefore, "affected" with no public interest. It is emphatically the property of its owner who is selling a manufactured product at his own risk.—Wall St. Journal
    

19. We have ceased to be a profession and are now an industry.—WILLIAM A. WHITE, to American Society of Newspaper Editors