Joshua Nkomo Quotes

The government that has imprisoned more journalists than any other in the world was democratically elected.

We must have a free press. If we are to maintain democracxy as we know it, we must have a free and adversarial press.... That's how dictoators get power [by intimidating, restriciting and censoring the press.]

When someone has to intervene to defend the liberty of the press, that society is sick.

For thirty years the press has ceased to exist in Turkey. There are indeed newspapers, many of them even, but the scissors of censorship cut them in so emasculating a manner that they no longer have any potency. If I dare, I would call them gelded newspapers or rather, to keep the local color, eunuchs.

We cannot have a society in which some dictator somewhere can impose censorship here in the United States.

They have been talking about a dictatorship and they were right because there's a dictatorship and there's a government that has been fighting that dictatorship, the dictatorship of the media.

Numerous politicians have seized absolute power and muzzled the press. Never in history has the press seized absolute power and muzzled the politicians.

When a person goes to a country and finds their newspapers filled with nothing but good news, he can bet there are good men in jail.

Some of the press who speak loudly about the freedom of the press are themselves the enemies of freedom. Countless people dare not say a thing because they know it will be picked up and made a song of by the press. That limits freedom.

It is not true that virtually all news in a totalitarian state is false.

Despite all the gains for democracy in the world, in many countries anyone who wants to publish truths unwelcome to the government risks suppression and criminal punishment.

Freedom of the press is guaranteed only to those who own one.

Routine is a declivity down which many governments slide, and routine says that freedom of the press is dangerous.

Being born in Cuba, a country where freedom of speech is non-existent, it's startling to observe how Venezuela, where I was happily raised, is fast becoming Cuba's mirror image: Dismantling of fundamental democratic rights deserved by its people and citizens of the world.

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

Despotism can no more exist in a nation until the liberty of the press be destroyed than the night can happen before the sun is set.

The state must not ... let itself be confused by the drivel about so-called "freedom of the press," ... it must make sure of this instrument of popular education, and place it in the service of the state.

Today, my freedom as a poet is taken by a censor; tomorrow, my freedom as a citizen will be taken by a policeman. Today I am banished from the theater; tomorrow, I shall be banished from the land. Today, I am gagged; tomorrow, I shall be deported. Today a state of siege exists in literature; tomorrow, it will exist in the city.

Whatever may be the immediate gains and losses, the dangers to our safety arising from political suppression are always greater than the dangers to that safety arising from political freedom.

When despots rule, cartoonists die.

Freedom of the press, printing, publication and mass media shall be guaranteed. Censorship on newspapers is forbidden as well as notifying, suspending or cancelling them by administrative methods. In a state of emergency or in time of war a limited censorship may be imposed on the newspapers, publications and mass media in matters related to public safety or purposes of national security in accordance with the law.

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.

To-day a democrat of the old school would demand, not freedom for the press, but freedom from the press

Censorship is definitely one of the main issues that you have to live with in China – period!

There is nothing so fretting and vexatious, nothing so justly TERRIBLE to tyrants, and their tools and abettors, as a FREE PRESS.