Benjamin Disraeli Quotes

Let me make the newspapers, and I care not what is preached in the pulpit or what is enacted in Congress.

Never pick a fight with people who buy ink by the barrel.

In order to enjoy the inestimable benefits that the liberty of the press ensures, it is necessary to submit to the inevitable evils it creates

There is no weapon stronger than the press.

A free press is one of the pillars of democracy.

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.

I have never quite grasped the worry about the power of the press. After all, it speaks with a thousand voices, in constant dissonance.

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

Four hostile newspapers are more to be feared than a thousand bayonets.

The power of the periodical press is second only to that of the people.

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.

The newspapers, magazines and other journals of the country, it is safe to say, have shed and continue to shed, more light on the public and business affairs of, the nation than any other instrumentality of public; and since informed public opinion is the most potent of all restraints upon misgovernment, the suppression or abridgment of the publicity afforded by a free press cannot be regarded otherwise than with grave concern.

The first responsibility of the press is to use its freedom to protect the rights and liberties of all individuals …. If the occasion arises, raise bloody hell.

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

The newspapers of your country seem to be more powerful than the government.

[Drew] Pearson and [Walter] Winchell are a high price to pay for freedom of the press, but I guess you've got to do it.

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.

Only in democratic countries is there the beginning of a suspicion that the old axioms about the press being the bulwark of liberty is something that affects the daily life of the people--that it is a living warning rather than an ancient wisecrack. A people that wants to be free must arm itself with a free press..

The press is not only free, it is powerful. That power is ours. It is the proudest that man can enjoy. It was not granted by monarchs, it was not gained for us by aristocracies; but it sprang from the people, and, with an immortal instinct, it has always worked for the people.

I myself have felt the wrath of the media, but that's part of what a good democracy is.

We do not want to interfere with the freedom of press.

Now everybody has to work together. They are the fourth estate. Incredibly powerful.

Had not almost every man suffered by the Press, or were not the tyranny thereof become universal, I had not wanted reason for complaint.

It is well to remember that freedom through the press is the thing that comes first. Most of us probably feel we couldn't be free without newspapers, and that is the real reason we want the newspapers to be free.

A Fourth Estate, of Able Editors, springs up.