Just For Fun: Quotations used in Student Essays

". . . let us reward leaders who talk seriously about issues--and reject those who insult us by substituting slogans for thought and rhetoric for remedy. When we the people begin to consider the public good as well as our own narrow interests, politicians will have to do likewise." Arthur M. Schlesinger, Jr. VA

"The press (is) the warning signal of a nation." Thomas Jefferson VA

"Without criticism and reliable and intelligent reporting, the government cannot govern." Walter Lippman VA

"Perhaps an editor might. . .divide his paper into four chapters, heading the first, truths; second, probabilities; third, possibilities; fourth, lies." Thomas Jefferson VA

"No news is better than evil news." James I VA

"For the reality is that the media are probably the most powerful of all our institutions today; and they are squandering their power and ignoring their obligation." Carl Bernstein--journalist for Newsweek VA

"One can use the quotation 'give people light and they will find their way' to help analyze the situation. This quotation is saying give people all the information and they can make their own decision. . . Now if the media controls the amount of light to be given, it also controls the direction the people will wander toward." OK

"Adolf Hitler said 'Propaganda must not serve the truth, especially insofar as it might bring out something favorable for the opponent.'" SD

"As John Chancellor once said, 'Journalism must give mankind a picture of the world on which it can act...I wonder if we haven't missed that goal. . .We have failed in some way to get across to the public the essence of the craft, which is to enable people in a democracy to make decisions based on information.'" KS

"A columnist Richard Cohen said, 'Liberal or conservative, a reporter is a primitive being who would go after his own mother if he thought it was a good story." TX

"William A. Henry says that '. . . it is widely admitted in private that many journalists covering Bill Clinton feel generational affinity and unusual warmth toward him and that much of the White House press corps disdain President Bush and all his works. . ." TX

"Samuel Johnson said, 'The liberty of the press is a blessing when we are inclined to write against others, and a calamity when we find ourselves overborne by the multitude of our assailants.'" SD

"William Mather Lewis said, 'Today the world is a victim of propaganda because people are not intellectually competent. More than anything the United States needs effective citizens competent to do their own thinking.'" SD

"Liz Smith, a columnist for the New York Daily News 'Thank God there is a National Enquirer to print all that dirt so we don't have to.'" SD

"Richard Cobden commented, 'A newspaper should be the maximum of information and the minimum of comment.'" OK

"Oscar Wilde, a British playwright, once said, "In America, the president reigns for four years, and journalism governs forever and ever." MD

"The campaign is much more under the control of the press than of the candidates and political parties," says Sandra Bill Rokeach, a political expert." MD

"Those who live by the media can also die by it." Sidney Blumenthal's The Permanent Campaign." MD

"Michael Deaver, (political consultant) 'The media, while they won't admit it, are not in the news business; they're in entertainment.'" PA

"Thomas Jefferson once said, 'If a nation expects to be ignorant and free, it expects what never was, and what never will be.'" NH

"Ben Franklin once said, 'If all printers were determined not to print anything till they were sure that it would offend nobody, there would be very little printed.' " SD

"Political debates are sort of like stock car races--no one really cares who wins; they just want to see the crashes" Molly Ivins, Texas Columnist OH

"Alexis de Tocqueville summarized this well when he said: 'In order to enjoy the inestimable benefits the liberty of the press ensures, it is necessary to submit to the inevitable evils that it creates.' " OH

"The eye-it cannot choose but see; we cannot bid the ear be still; our bodies feel; where'er they be, against or with our will." William Wordsworth NY

"All media work us over completely. They are so pervasive in their personal, political, economic, aesthetic, psychological, moral, ethical, and social consequences that they leave no part of us untouched, unaffected, unaltered." Marshall McLuhan NY

"Some say that if Mark Twain were alive, he would say of polls what he did of New England weather, 'If you don't like the results, wait an hour.'" MA

"'News is what I say it is. It's something worth knowing by my standards,' declared David Brinkley in the April 11, 1964 issue of TV Guide." IN

"Michael Oreshes, a reporter for The New York Times, said 'When we refuse to publish it, someone else publishes it. Then the fact that they published it becomes a story, so it still gets into our paper even though we originally decided it wasn't worth publishing. So you really lose control over your role as the gatekeeper. . . on account of this some people begin to weaken their standards and say, 'Well, it's going to get published anyway, so I'll go ahead and publish it first.''" IL

"Jesse Jackson: 'Whether faithful or unfaithful as a husband--unless a candidate's character impacts...on important public policy, national interest, or national security questions--private moral questions have no place in a presidential campaign. They are a matter between the candidate and his/her family, their own conscience, and their God.' " IL

"Meg Greenfield of Newsweek said, 'Not so long ago Presidents, Supreme Court Justices and Members of Congress, who were and are greatly revered by many Americans turned out to have the personal moral s of a billy goat. Are we then to tear the pages about them out of our history books? Revise our judgments? What? ' " IL

"Gus Weill, a consultant, says: 'The voting public is sorely put on. They now see mostly an illusion. It used to be candidates went from town to town. That's gone now.' " IL

"Mark Twain once said that a lie makes it halfway around the world before the truth can get its shoes on. Today, with the high-tech running sneakers, the truth can at least give chase. But it never really catches up." (John Alter)