James Madison Quotes

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.

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.

I'm not afraid of the press or the Militia.

To limit the press is to insult a nation; to prohibit reading of certain books is to declare the inhabitants to be either fools or slaves.

It is a misfortune that necessity has induced men to accord greater license to this formidable engine, in order to obtain liberty, than can be borne with less important objects in view; for the press, like fire, is an excellent servant, but a terrible master.

The world is indebted for all triumphs which have been gained by reason and humanity over error and oppression.

Our liberty depends on the freedom of the press, and that cannot be limited without being lost

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 fact that the liberty of the press may be abused by miscreant purveyors of scandal does not make any the less necessary the immunity of the press.

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.

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

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

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.

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.

Today the greatest evil—and therefore the most immediate—is the press.

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

A free press may be good or bad, but without freedom a press can only be bad.

That's how dictators get started.

Our Republic and its press will rise or fall together.

I think there are a lot of reasons to be critical of the media in America.

As to the media, they are protected by the First Amendment, as they should be.

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

Television has made dictatorship impossible but democracy unbearable.

The press is the enemy.