“A free Press is the unsleeping guardian of every other right that freemen prize; it is the most dangerous foe of tyranny.”
You Get It In Black And White, Collier's, 28 December 1935
Reproduced in The Collected Essays of Sir Winston Churchill, Vol IV, Churchill at Large, Centenary Edition (1976), Library of Imperial History, p. 323. ISBN 0903988453
The 1930s
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Winston S. Churchill601
Prime Minister of the United Kingdom 1874–1965Related quotes
George Seldes (1890–1995) American journalist
Lords of the Press (1938)
Incorporates the famous observation of Joseph de Maistre that "every nation gets the government it deserves."
“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 <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.
Umar (585–644) Second Caliph of Rashidun Caliphate and a companion of Muhammad
As quoted in Al Farooq, Umar (1944) by Muhammad Husayn Haykal, Ch. 5, p. 123
Thomas Aquinas (1225–1274) Italian Dominican scholastic philosopher of the Roman Catholic Church
Verbum Supernum Prodiens (hymn for Lauds on Corpus Christi), stanza 5 (O Salutaris Hostia)
George Fitzhugh (1806–1881) American activist
Source: Cannibals All!, or Slaves Without Masters (1857), pp. 102-103
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.
“An enemy forgiven is more dangerous than a thousand foes.”
Rodolfo Graziani (1882–1955) Italian general
Quoted in "The Suez Canal in World Affairs" - Page 79 - by Hugh Joseph Schonfield - 1952
Jimmy Carter (1924) American politician, 39th president of the United States (in office from 1977 to 1981)