Joseph Pulitzer Quotes

Publicity is a great purifier because it sets in action the forces of public opinion, and in this country public opinion controls the courses of the nation.

Journalism is what maintains democracy. It's the force for progressive social change.

The only security of all is in a free press. The force of public opinion cannot be resisted when permitted freely to be expressed. The agitation it produces must be submitted to. It is necessary, to keep he waters pure.

When it comes to governments and corporations, we should demand that less is secret. That's where corruption flowers.

We've seen over time that countries that have the best economic growth are those that have good governance, and good governance comes from freedom of communication. It comes from ending corruption. It comes from a populace that can go online and say, 'This politician is corrupt, this administrator, or this public official is corrupt.'

The better the information it has, the better democracy works. Silence and secrecy are never good for it.

Machiavelli's teaching would hardly have stood the test of Parliamentary government, for public discussion demands at least the profession of good faith.

Whether people care enough about local news to pay for it is, sadly, an entirely different question than whether our democracy requires a strong watchdog function at the local level to ensure safeguards against abuse, chicanery, and outright dishonesty.

The Australian public are very fair and they are always prepared to give the leader of a major political party a fair go.

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.

The better-informed we are, the more we can do to make sure what's happening is in our interests and is accountable to us.

I'm not going to reduce the choices of Canadians at the ballot box by backroom deals or secret arrangements. I think that's a cause for cynicism more than anything else.

But democracy isn't a state of perfection. It has to be improved, and that means constant vigilance.

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 secret ballot makes a secret government; and a secret government is a secret band of robbers and murderers.

I have always believed that on important issues, the leaders must lead. Where the leaders fail to lead, and people are really concerned about it, the people will take the lead and make the leaders follow.

Democracy must be built through open societies that share information. When there is information, there is enlightenment. When there is debate, there are solutions. When there is no sharing of power, no rule of law, no accountability, there is abuse, corruption, subjugation and indignation.

At least the politicians are accountable to the voters.

So I think democracy, in the long-term, in our countries will survive if it comes to be associated with leadership, will not survive if democracy plus media brings to us more and more followship rather than leadership.

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

The duty of youth is to challenge corruption.

Government ought to be all outside and no inside [for] corruption thrives in secret places [and] it [is] a fair presumption that secrecy means impropriety.

Government is like an undershirt. If you don't change it frequently, it begins to stink.

We have a right to know and a duty to discover what you think of the great constitutional issues of our time.

Secrecy in government, in the public mind, becomes synonymous with deception in government.