Walter Lippmann Quotes

A free press is one of the pillars of democracy.

A free press is not a privilege but an organic necessity in a great society. ... A great society is simply a big and complicated urban society.

I have sworn to uphold the Constitution ... and a free press is absolutely vital to the freedom of this country.

A free press is the immune system of representative democracy.

There is no democracy without journalism.

Freedom of the press is the staff of life, for any vital democracy.

The only security of all is in a free press. The force of public opinion cannot be resisted when permitted freely to be expressed. The agitation it produces must be submitted to. It is necessary, to keep he waters pure.

The Founding Fathers gave the free press the protection it must have to bare the secrets of government and inform the people.

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.

The basis of our government's 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 for a moment to prefer the latter.

Without criticism and reliable and intelligent reporting, the government cannot govern.

Freedom of the press is the mortar that binds together the bricks of democracy -- and it is also the open window embedded in those bricks.

A free press stands as one of the great interpreters between the government and the people. To allow it to be fettered is to fetter ourselves.

In a democracy threatened by excessive secrecy and the criminalizing of news gathering, the more sunlight the better.

Democratic societies need a strong media, and WikiLeaks is part of that media.

The country is only as strong as its journalism - that's the way democracies work. The higher the quality of the information, the better informed the electorate is and the better the government runs.

The only security of all is in a free press.

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. But I should mean that every man should receive those papers and be capable of reading them.

Thoughtful criticism and close scrutiny of all government officials by the press and the public are an important part of our democratic society.

We have got to nurture the spirit of independent journalism in this country, or we'll not save capitalism from its own excesses, and we'll not save democracy from its own inertia.

The more I view the independence of the press in its principal effects, the more I convince myself that among the moderns the independence of the press is the capital and so to speak the constitutive element of freedom.

Without a free press there can be no free society. That is axiomatic. However, freedom of the press is not an end in itself but a means to the end of a free society. The scope and nature of the constitutional guarantee of the freedom of the press are to be viewed and applied in that light.

Freedom of press and freedom of speech: What a blessing for a country while in the hands of honest, patriotic men; what a curse if in the hands of designing demagogues.

The job of the press is to encourage debate, not to supply the public with information.

I have always been of the opinion that the right kind of journalism is a critical part of our democracy.