Leonard Wibberley Quotes

Beneath the rule of men entirely great, the pen is mightier than the sword.

To hold a pen is to be at war.

Literature is at once the cause and the effect of social progress.

The pen is mightier than the sword.

Make the paper interesting.

Don't talk to me of your Archimedes' lever. He was an absentminded person with a mathematical imagination. Mathematics commands all my respect, but I have no use for engines. Give me the right word and the right accent and I will move the world.

I'm a writer. I've been a journalist for my whole adult life.

I've basically worked as a journalist and a writer.

Great reporters get people to talk to them. Master reporters get people to want to talk to them.

In this Day the secrets of the earth are laid bare before the eyes of men. The pages of swiftly-appearing newspapers are indeed the mirror of the world. They reflect the deeds and the pursuits of diverse peoples and kindreds. They both reflect them and make them known. They are a mirror endowed with hearing, sight and speech. This is an amazing and potent phenomenon. However, it behooveth the writers thereof to be purged from the promptings of evil passions and desires and to be attired with the raiment of justice and equity. They should enquire into situations as much as possible and ascertain the facts, then set them down in writing.

Misunderstanding is the great enemy of every White House press secretary.

No greater or more unwarrantable restriction on freedom of speech or writing is, to our thinking, conceivable than this law of libel and slander.

The value of the writing is not in what you publish but in its consequences. If you set out to describe reality, then the influence of the writing is upon reality

The best definition of journalism I have heard; to challenge authority - all authority - especially so when governments and politicians take us to war, when they have decided that they will kill and others will die.

Junk journalism is the evidence of a society that has got at least one thing right, that there should be nobody with the power to dictate where responsible journalism begins

Literature was not promulgated by a pale and emasculated critical priesthood singing their litanies in empty churches — nor is it a game for the cloistered elect, the tinhorn mendicants of low calorie despair. Literature is as old as speech. It grew out of human need for it, and it has not changed except to become more needed.

Woe to that nation whose literature is cut short by the intrusion of force. This is not merely interference with freedom of the press but the sealing up of a nation’s heart, the excision of its memory.

The newspapers! Sir, they are the most villainous — licentious — abominable — infernal — Not that I ever read them — no — I make it a rule never to look into a newspaper.

… a word carries far--very far--deals destruction through time as the bullets go flying through space.

Literature nowadays is a trade. Putting aside men of genius, who may succeed by mere cosmic force, your successful man of letters is your skillful tradesman. He thinks first and foremost of the markets ...

I warn my readers against my biases.

Find out what happened and put it in the paper

You or any fair man, looking back on the history of our own country for the past forty years must admit, that the Press has gradually intensified he feelings of mutual jealousy and hatred between the North and the South till war not only resulted, but was bound to result. You see yet the Press of each Section, instead of healing the gap, is vigorously widening it.

You have to talk to them before you think about bombing them.

As one who fought in all of Israel's wars, and learned from personal experience that without proper force, we do not have a chance of surviving in this region, which does not show mercy towards the weak, I have also learned from experience that the sword alone cannot decide this bitter dispute in this land