Inspirational Quotations

Inspirational Quotations on Journalists

I get up in the morning with an idea for a three-volume novel and by nightfall it’s a paragraph in my column.
Don Marquis (1878–1937) American Humorist, Journalist, Author

Most rock journalism is people who can’t write, interviewing people who can’t talk, for people who can’t read.
Frank Zappa (1940–93) American Rock Guitarist, Singer, Composer

Journalism is literature in a hurry.
Matthew Arnold (1822–88) English Poet, Critic

Freedom of the press is limited to those who own one.
A. J. Liebling (1904–63) American Journalist, Press Critic

The facts fairly and honestly presented; truth will take care of itself.
William Allen White (1868–1944) American Editor, Politician, Author

I find I journalize too tediously. Let me try to abbreviate.
James Boswell (1740–95) Scottish Biographer, Diarist

He types his labored column—weary drudge! Senile fudge and solemn: spare, editor, to condemn these dry leaves of his autumn.
Robertson Davies (1913–95) Canadian Novelist, Playwright, Essayist

If I’d written all the truth I knew for the past ten years, about 600 people—including me—would be rotting in prison cells from Rio to Seattle today. Absolute truth is a very rare and dangerous commodity in the context of professional journalism.
Hunter S. Thompson (1937–2005) American Journalist

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 (1923–2007) American Novelist Essayist

Opinionated writing is always the most difficult… simply because it involves retaining in the cold morning-after crystal of the printed word the burning flow of molten feeling.
Gavin Lyall (1932–2003) English Spy Fiction Writer

Journalism will kill you, but it will keep you alive while you’re at it.
Horace Greeley (1811–72) American Journalist, Author

Journalism consists largely in saying “Lord James is dead” to people who never knew Lord James was alive.
G. K. Chesterton (1874–1936) English Journalist, Novelist, Essayist, Poet

A journalist is a person who has mistaken their calling.
Otto von Bismarck (1815–98) German Chancellor, Prime Minister

Journalism is the entertainment business.
Frank Herbert (1920–86) American Science Fiction Writer

I think there ought to be a club in which preachers and journalists could come together and have the sentimentalism of the one matched with the cynicism of the other. That ought to bring them pretty close to the truth.
Reinhold Niebuhr (1892–1971) American Christian Theologian

A petty reason perhaps why novelists more and more try to keep a distance from journalists is that novelists are trying to write the truth and journalists are trying to write fiction.
Graham Greene (1904–91) British Novelist, Playwright, Short Story Writer

In the real world, nothing happens at the right place at the right time. It is the job of journalists and historians to correct that.
Mark Twain (1835–1910) American Humorist

I hate journalists. There is nothing in them but tittering jeering emptiness. They have all made what Dante calls the Great Refusal. The shallowest people on the ridge of the earth.
William Butler Yeats (1865–1939) Irish Poet, Dramatist

Journalists are like dogs, when ever anything moves they begin to bark.
Arthur Schopenhauer (1788–1860) German Philosopher

Our job is like a baker’s work—his rolls are tasty as long as they’re fresh; after two days they’re stale; after a week, they’re covered with mould and fit only to be thrown out.
Ryszard Kapuscinski (1932–2007) Polish Journalist

It was a fatal day when the public discovered that the pen is mightier than the paving-stone, and can be made as offensive as the brickbat. They at once sought for the journalist, found him, developed him, and made him their industrious and well-paid servant. It is greatly to be regretted, for both their sakes.
Oscar Wilde (1854–1900) Irish Poet, Playwright

The real news is bad news.
Marshall Mcluhan (1911–80) Canadian Writer, Thinker, Educator

Every journalist owes tribute to the evil one.
Jean de La Fontaine (1621–95) French Poet, Short Story Writer

Journalism without a moral position is impossible. Every journalist is a moralist. It’s absolutely unavoidable. A journalist is someone who looks at the world and the way it works, someone who takes a close look at things every day and reports what she sees, someone who represents the world, the event, for others. She cannot do her work without judging what she sees.
Marguerite Duras (1914–96) French Novelist, Playwright

The man must have a rare recipe for melancholy, who can be dull in Fleet Street.
Charles Lamb (1775–1834) British Essayist, Poet

We need not be theologians to see that we have shifted responsibility for making the world interesting from God to the newspaperman.
Daniel J. Boorstin (1914–2004) American Historian, Academic, Attorney, Writer

Bad manners make a journalist.
Oscar Wilde (1854–1900) Irish Poet, Playwright

Literature is the art of writing something that will be read twice; journalism what will be grasped at once.
Cyril Connolly (1903–74) British Literary Critic, Writer

I see journalists as the manual workers, the laborers of the word. Journalism can only be literature when it is passionate.
Marguerite Duras (1914–96) French Novelist, Playwright

I am a journalist and, under the modern journalist’s code of Olympian objectivity (and total purity of motive), I am absolved of responsibility. We journalists don’t have to step on roaches. All we have to do is turn on the kitchen light and watch the critters scurry.
P. J. O’Rourke (1947–2022) American Journalist, Political Satirist

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