Tom Stoppard Quotes

The only security of all is in a free press.

Freedom of the press is not an end in itself but a means to the end of achieving a free society.

We have to uphold a free press and freedom of speech - because, in the end, lies and misinformation are no match for the truth.

Without freedom of the press, there can be no representative government.

Criticism of government finds sanctuary in several portions of the 1st Amendment. It is part of the right of free speech. It embraces freedom of the press.

We need a free media, not just freedom of speech.

In revealing the workings of government that led to the Vietnam War, the newspapers nobly did precisely that which the Founders hoped and trusted they would do.

Openness, transparency - these are among the few weapons the citizenry has to protect itself from the powerful and the corrupt... and that is the best thing that WikiLeaks has done.

What I'm thinking about more and more these days is simply the importance of transparency, and Jefferson's saying that he'd rather have a free press without a government than a government without a free press.

We are a nation in which freedom is alive in the squares and streets, in the daily work of the communications media, in the open relationship between the governing and the governed.

The People have a right to the Truth as they have a right to life, liberty and the pursuit of happiness.

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

Without an unfettered press, without liberty of speech, all the outward forms and structures of free institutions are a sham, a pretense—the sheerest mockery.

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

Freedom of the press and a free society either prosper together or perish together.

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.

We live in a dirty and dangerous world. There are some things the general public does not need to know, and shouldn't. I believe democracy flourishes when the government can take legitimate steps to keep its secrets and when the press can decide whether to print what it knows

Free and open communications is the best guarantee of democracy.

Why should freedom of speech and freedom of the press be allowed? Why should a government which is doing what it believes is right allow itself to be criticized? It would not allow opposition by lethal weapons. Ideas are much more fatal things than guns.

… the Founding Fathers gave the free press the protection it must have to fulfill its essential role in our democracy. The press was to serve the governed, not the governors. The Government's power to censor the press was abolished so that the press would remain forever free to censure the Government. The press was protected so that it could bare the secrets of government and inform the people. Only a free and unrestrained press can effectively expose deception in government. And paramount among the responsibilities of a free press is the duty to prevent any part of the government from deceiving the people and sending them off to distant lands to die of foreign fevers and foreign shot and shell.

Only a free and unrestrained press can effectively expose deception in government. And paramount among the responsibilities of a free press is the duty to prevent any part of the government from deceiving the people

Liberty of the press is a privilege to publish, with impunity, falsehood on matters of public concern, in the honest belief it is truth, with good motives, for justifiable ends

Of all times in time of war the press should be free.

Governments pale in the face of truth. It’s the one thing they fear most.

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.