"I believe in equality for everyone, except reporters and photographers."
— Mahatma Gandhi

"“You're miserable, edgy and tired. You're in the perfect mood for journalism."
— Warren Ellis

"If I want to knock a story off the front page, I just change my hairstyle."
— Hillary Rodham Clinton

"When there is no freedom, there is no creativity."
— Soud Qbeilat

""In the English language, it all comes down to this: Twenty-six letters, when combined correctly, can create magic. Twenty -six letters form the foundation of a free, informed society.""
— John Grogan (Bad Dogs Have More Fun: And Other Tails of Animals, Life and Family)

"This seems charmingly paradoxical: scientists seek one truth but often voice many opinions; journalists often speak of many truths while voicing a uniform view."
— Christopher Essex (Taken By Storm: The Troubled Science, Policy and Politics of Global Warming)

"I got addicted. News, particularly daily news, is more addictive than crack cocaine, more addictive than heroin, more addictive than cigarettes. "
— Dan Rather

"Take away the newspaper—and this country of ours would become a scene of chaos. Without daily assurance of the exact facts—so far as we are able to know and publish them—the public imagination would run riot. Ten days without the daily newspaper and the strong pressure of worry and fear would throw the people of this country into mob hysteria—feeding upon rumors, alarms, terrified by bugbears and illusions. We have become the watchmen of the night and of a troubled day. . . ."
— Harry Chandler

"If a person is not talented enough to be a novelist, not smart enough to be a lawyer, and his hands are too shaky to perform operations, he becomes a journalist. "
— Norman Mailer

"I had someone at the Houston police station shoot me with heroin so I could do a story about it. The experience was a special kind of hell. I came out understanding full well how one could be addicted to 'smack,' and quickly."
— Dan Rather

"As a journalist, one tends to think there's nothing off limits"
— Peter Jennings

"Our Republic and its press will rise or fall together," Pulitzer wrote. "An able, disinterested, public-spirited press, with trained intelligence to know the right and courage to do it, can preserve that public virtue without which popular government is a sham and a mockery. A cynical, mercenary, demagogic press will produce in time a people as base as itself. The power to mould the future of the Republic will be in the hands of the journalists of future generations."
— Joseph Pulitzer

"Magazines all too frequently lead to books and should be regarded by the prudent as the heavy petting of literature."
— Fran Lebowitz

"Journalism consists largely in saying 'Lord James is dead' to people who never knew Lord James was alive."
— G.K. Chesterton

"Journalism is literature in a hurry."
— Matthew Arnold

"I don't think a tough question is disrespectful."
— Helen Thomas

"Pender laughed. "Verify? In this day and age? Who cares about verifying anything? It's all about the speed. Who gets there first defines the truth. You know that as well as any man living.""
— David Baldacci

"So much for Objective Journalism. Don't bother to look for it here--not under any byline of mine; or anyone else I can think of. With the possible exception of things like box scores, race results, and stock market tabulations, there is no such thing as Objective Journalism. The phrase itself is a pompous contradiction in terms."
— Hunter S. Thompson (Fear and Loathing: On the Campaign Trail '72)

"I became a newspaperman. I couldn't find honest employment."
— Mark Twain

"People sometimes imagine that just because they have access to so many newspapers, radio and TV channels, they will get an infinity of different opinions. Then they discover that things are just the opposite: the power of these loudspeakers only amplifies the opinion prevalent at a certain time, to the point where it covers any other opinion."
— Amin Maalouf (The First Century After Beatrice)

"We had all opted to take City's financial reporting course work, which, in theory, meant we wanted to write about stock prices and corporate takeovers. That, of course, was a joke. No one still in their twenties, and broke, goes into journalism to write about money—a subject in which they still have zero practical experience."
— Chris Ayres (War Reporting for Cowards)

"American journalism (like the journalism of any other country) is predominantly paltry and worthless. Its pretensions are enormous, but its achievements are insignificant." "
— H. L. Mencken

"O jornalista é um poeta delicado: sempre acha o rascunho mais sincero do que o publicado."
— Mario Quintana

"I think a journalist is someone who believes in something that they would be willing to quit over."
— Carol Marin

"I think I was always interested in the larger world, even as a kid, and my experiences as a journalist only heightened that interest. Covering conflict, I learned that though leaders often try to create a sense of "us" and "them," the differences are not that delineated. I often felt like it was a whole bunch of "us," with some of "them" scattered around. That made me feel that the borders we draw around ourselves are often artificial.
"
— Masha Hamilton

"Einen guten Journalisten erkennt man daran, dass er sich nicht gemein macht mit einer Sache, auch nicht mit einer guten Sache; dass er überall dabei ist, aber nirgendwo dazugehört"
— Hanns Joachim Friedrichs

""I have to be accurate; I don't have to be impartial""
— John Burns, New York Times

"Indeed, tone or voice is what you get when, larynxlike, you breathe through structure."
— Lawrence Weschler

"...what I'm getting at is like the distinction between tourist and a traveler. The tourist experience is superficial and glancing. The traveler develops a deeper connection with her surroundings. She is more invested in them -- the traveler stays longer, makes her own plans, chooses her own destination, and usually travels alone: solo travel and solo participation, although the most difficult emotionally, seem the most likely to produce a good story."
— Ted Conover

"...required for good fiction: character, conflict, change through time. And if you're really blessed, you get resolution. But life doesn't usually work out that way."
— Ted Conover

"It is a pity indeed to travel and not get this essential sense of landscape values. You do not need a sixth sense for it. It is there if you just close your eyes and breathe softly through your nose; you will hear the whispered message, for all landscapes ask the same question in the same whisper. 'I am watching you -- are you watching yourself in me?' Most travelers hurry too much...the great thing is to try and travel with the eyes of the spirit wide open, and not to much factual information. To tune in, without reverence, idly -- but with real inward attention. It is to be had for the feeling...you can extract the essence of a place once you know how. If you just get as still as a needle, you'll be there."
— Lawrence Durrell (Spirit of Place: Letters and Essays on Travel)

"I read a lot of books. Here are the books I'm using for my 9/11 project. [Wright gestures to three six-foot-long shelves of books.] As I read them I highlight certain passages. Then I have an assistant write down each quote on an index card and note where it came from."
— Lawrence Wright

"I think being a liberal, in the true sense, is being nondoctrinaire, nondogmatic, non-committed to a cause - but examining each case on its merits. Being left of center is another thing; it's a political position. I think most newspapermen by definition have to be liberal; if they're not liberal, by my definition of it, then they can hardly be good newspapermen. If they're preordained dogmatists for a cause, then they can't be very good journalists; that is, if they carry it into their journalism."
— Walter Cronkite

"But what is the difference between literature and journalism?
...Journalism is unreadable and literature is not read. That is all.
"
— Oscar Wilde

"I became a newspaperman. I couldn't find honest employment.
"
— Mark Twain

""I think a journalist is someone who believes in something that they would be willing to quit over.""
— Carol Marin