Share on Facebook Share on Twitter Comment on this quote Share via Email Print this Page [261-280] of 288 Press quotesPress QuotesPress Previous 20 quotes Next 20 quotes 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.~ George Sutherland There is no such thing ... in America as an independent press.~ John Swinton The first duty of a newspaper is to be accurate. If it is accurate, it follows that it is fair.~ Herbert B. Swope The Illinois eavesdropping statute restricts a medium of expression commonly used for the preservation and communication of information and ideas, thus triggering First Amendment scrutiny. Illinois has criminalized the nonconsensual recording of most any oral communication, including recordings of public officials doing the public’s business in public and regardless of whether the recording is open or surreptitious. Defending the broad sweep of this statute, the State’s Attorney relies on the government’s interest in protecting conversational privacy, but that interest is not implicated when police officers are performing their duties in public places and engaging in public communications audible to persons who witness the events. Even under the more lenient intermediate standard of scrutiny applicable to content-neutral burdens on speech, this application of the statute very likely flunks. The Illinois eavesdropping statute restricts far more speech than necessary to protect legitimate privacy interests; as applied to the facts alleged here, it likely violates the First Amendment’s free-speech and free-press guarantees.~ Judge Diane Schwerm Sykes When even one American -- who has done nothing wrong -- is forced by fear to shut his mind and close his mouth, then all Americans are in peril.~ Harry S. Truman Censorship is telling a man he can't have a steak just because a baby can't chew it.~ Mark Twain According to the Taranto Principle, the press's failure to hold left-wingers accountable for bad behavior merely encourages the left's bad behavior to the point that its candidates are repellent to ordinary Americans.~ R. Emmett Tyrrell, Jr. A library is an arsenal of liberty.~ Unknown The media can now wistfully reflect on their glory days of the 1970's when the majority of people actually bought into their bullshit.~ Laura K. Van Onymous The corporate grip on opinion in the United States is one of the wonders of the Western world. No First World country has ever managed to eliminate so entirely from its media all objectivity -- much less dissent.~ Gore Vidal I detest what you write, but I would give my life to make it possible for you to continue to write.~ Voltaire We have a natural right to make use of our pens as of our tongue, at our peril, risk and hazard.~ Voltaire History is fables agreed upon.~ Voltaire Those who call themselves "liberals" today are asking for policies which are precisely the opposite of those policies which the liberals of the nineteenth century advocated in their liberal programs. The so-called liberals of today have the very popular idea that freedom of speech, of thought of the press, freedom of religion, freedom from imprisonment without trial -- that all these freedoms can be preserved in the absence of what is called economic freedom. They do not realize that, in a system where there is no market, where the government directs everything, all those other freedoms are illusory, even if they are made into laws and written up in constitutions.~ Ludwig von Mises There is a point, and it is reached more easily than is supposed, where interference with freedom of the arts and literature becomes an attack on the life of society.~ Rebecca West You say that freedom of utterance is not for time of stress, and I reply with the sad truth that only in time of stress is freedom of utterance in danger… Only when free utterance is suppressed is it needed, and when it is needed it is most vital to justice.~ William Allen White If the true freedom of the press is to decide for itself what to publish and when to publish it, the true responsibility of the press must be to assert and defend that freedom… What the press in America needs is less inhibition, not more restraint.~ Tom Wicker The form of government that is most suitable to the artist is no government at all. ... One might point out how the Renaissance was great, because it sought to solve no social problem, and busied itself not about such things, but suffered the individual to develop freely, beautifully, and naturally, and so had great and individual artists, and great, individual men. One might point out how Louis XIV, by creating the modern state, destroyed the individualism of the artist ...~ Oscar Wilde To admit authorities, however heavily furred and gowned, into our libraries and let them tell us how to read, what to read, what value to place upon what we read, is to destroy the spirit of freedom which is the breath of those sanctuaries.~ Virginia Woolf If we don’t believe in freedom of expression for people we despise, we don’t believe in it at all.~ Virginia Woolf Previous 20 quotes Next 20 quotes Share on Facebook Tweet Email Print