Theodore Roosevelt Quotes

The healthy presidency is one that never lets the press hustle the President's priorities.

Every successful president has suffered imputations that he has in sinister fashion charmed the press or used a new medium of communication (radio, television, the Internet) to claim an undeserved standing.

Oftentimes the … media only partially quote what politicians say. This has prevented the public from understanding my true intentions. So now I am sending messages through Facebook and other networks directly to the public.

The press keep asking me, 'What was your biggest mistake?' But if I had made a big mistake, they'd all be writing about it, wouldn't they?

I don't want to be known as the guy who always takes his shirt off... I've done a lot of photo shoots lately for the press coming up with 'Immortals' and 'Breaking Dawn,' and every photographer wants to get the topless shot. We've really had to be choosy and not do that for every magazine. I've actually been trying to keep my clothes on more.

Doing interviews can sometimes mess up my head. It makes me feel dirty. It's frustrating how the press recycles a quote to death.

The press may hate me, and I know my battles with them are not over, but that doesn't matter.

My relationship with the journalists who covered the campaign was complicated. I often hid from the critical eye of their cameras and their omnipresent digital recorders, wary of the critique implicit in every captured moment. But I also grew to respect and understand their passion for their work, their love for the journey we were sharing.

Journalists say a thing that they know isn't true, in the hope that if they keep on saying it long enough it will be true.

The biggest difference between Kennedy and Nixon, as far as the press is concerned, is simply this: Jack Kennedy really liked newspaper people and he really enjoyed sparring with journalists.

... infiltrate and neutralize the mainstream American media.

We studied Western journalists' reporting methods, fed them story ideas, steered them toward sympathetic interviewees, and supplied them with the revolutionary movement's facts and figures.

People pay attention to what a President says, whether or not he pauses for emphasis in the right places. Sometimes they even read the text.

Journalism, as practiced by some, has become something akin to professional wrestling—something to watch rather than believe.

It’s always difficult for a President to explain his policies through the filter of the media and the crises of the day.

Even for a President who is not a professional actor, misrepresentation is a part of the job. Commentators who do not bear this in mind are like critics in the audience shouting, “Tell us what you really think” at an actor who is trying to bring off his drama.

Theodore Roosevelt may have invented the sound byte.

The media can make or break an administration.

I’ll lie as much as the next guy when my country’s interests are involved—if I have a chance of being believed..

I am one of the few men in public life who doesn't complain much about his treatment as the hands of the press. The press takes me to task every once in a while, but they have always been very kind, not attributing my hypocrisy to bad motives. They have always attributed it to a lack of mental capacity.

The fact that a man is a newspaper reporter is evidence of some flaw in character.

Our job [White House press secretaries] is to serve the interest of the President while recognizing the interests of the press.

Journalism is now not only reflecting what is happening, it is affecting what is happening. Governments all over the world watch CNN.

Everything I say, you know, goes into print. If I make a mistake, it doesn't merely affect me or you, but the country.

Many a public figure has come to imitate the journalism which describes him.