Letter to Colonel Charles Yancey http://oll.libertyfund.org/?option=com_staticxt&staticfile=show.php%3Ftitle=807&chapter=88152&layout=html&Itemid=27 (6 January 1816) ME 14:384 <br class="br">1810s <br class="br">Context: If a nation expects to be ignorant and free, in a state of civilization, it expects what never was and never will be. The functionaries of every government have propensities to command at will the liberty and property of their constituents. There is no safe deposit for these but with the people themselves; nor can they be safe with them without information. Where the press is free, and every man able to read, all is safe.
Thomas Jefferson (1743–1826) 3rd President of the United States of America
Letter to Colonel Charles Yancey http://oll.libertyfund.org/?option=com_staticxt&staticfile=show.php%3Ftitle=807&chapter=88152&layout=html&Itemid=27 (6 January 1816) ME 14:384 <br class="br">1810s
“Free press: all may read whatever is printed.”
Karlheinz Deschner (1924–2014) German writer and activist
Freie Presse: jeder darf lesen, was gedruckt wird.
Nur Lebendiges schwimmt gegen den Strom
“My definition of a free society is a society where it is safe to be unpopular.”
Adlai Stevenson (1900–1965) mid-20th-century Governor of Illinois and Ambassador to the UN
Speech in Detroit, Michigan (7 October 1952)
“No government ought to be without censors; and where the press is free, none ever will.”
Anatole France (1844–1924) French writer
No government ought to be without censors: & where the press is free, no one ever will. <br class="br">Thomas Jefferson, letter http://odur.let.rug.nl/~usa/P/tj3/writings/brf/jefl100.htm to George Washington (9 September 1792) <br class="br">Misattributed
“No government ought to be without censors; and where the press is free no one ever will.”
Thomas Jefferson (1743–1826) 3rd President of the United States of America
Letter to George Washington (9 September 1792)
1790s
Frank Hague (1876–1956) Mayor of Jersey City
Speech to the Jersey City Chamber of Commerce (12 January 1938), as quoted in The Last Three Miles : Politics, Murder, and the Construction of America's First Superhighway (2007) by Steven Hart, p. 137.
Context: As long as I am mayor of this city the great industries are secure. We hear about constitutional rights, free speech and the free press. Every time I hear these words I say to myself, "That man is a Red, that man is a Communist." You never hear a real American talk like that.
“A free press is one where it's okay to state the conclusion you're led to by the evidence.”
Bill Moyers (1934) American journalist
Speech at the National Conference on Media Reform (15 May 2005) http://www.freepress.net/news/8120 <br class="br">Context: A free press is one where it's okay to state the conclusion you're led to by the evidence. One reason I'm in hot water is because my colleagues and I at NOW didn't play by the conventional rules of Beltway journalism. Those rules divide the world into Democrats & Republicans, liberals & conservatives, and allow journalists to pretend they have done their job if instead of reporting the truth behind the news, they merely give each side an opportunity to spin the news.
Wendell Phillips (1811–1884) American abolitionist, advocate for Native Americans, orator and lawyer
Anti-Slavery Speech (January 1852) http://books.google.com/books?id=SCpVAAAAYAAJ&pg=PA22 Published in The Works of Wendell Phillips, Street & Smith (1902), p. 22-23 <br class="br">1850s
“The only security of all is in a free press.”
Thomas Jefferson (1743–1826) 3rd President of the United States of America
“the average man does not want to be free. he simply wants to be safe.”
H.L. Mencken (1880–1956) American journalist and writer
