"To your request of my opinion of..." - Quote by Thomas Jefferson
To your request of my opinion of the manner in which a newspaper should be conducted, so as to be most useful, I should answer, "by restraining it to true facts & sound principles only." Yet I fear such a paper would find few subscribers. It is a melancholy truth, that a suppression of the press could not more completely deprive the nation of it's benefits, than is done by it's abandoned prostitution to falsehood.
More by Thomas Jefferson
“We are not immortal ourselves, my friend; how can we expect our enjoyments to be so? We have no rose without its thorn; no pleasure without alloy. It is the law of our existence; and we must acquiesce.”
“The reward of esteem, respect and gratitude [is] due to those who devote their time and efforts to render the youths of every successive age fit governors for the next.”
“Above all I hope that the education of the common people will be attended to so they won't forget the basic principles of freedom.”
More on Press
“What chiefly distinguishes the daily press is its incurable fear of ideas, its constant effort to evade the discussion of fundamentals by translating all issues into a few elemental fears, its incessant reduction of all reflection to mere emotion.”
“Freedom of conscience, of education, of speech, of assembly are among the very fundamentals of democracy and all of them would be nullified should freedom of the press ever be successfully challenged.”
“Freedom of the press is to the machinery of the state what the safety valve is to the steam engine.”
More on Truth
“Satire is a sort of glass, wherein beholders do generally discover everybody's face but their own.”
“While the question of who killed President Kennedy is important, the question 'what killed him' is more important.”
“The sermon which I write inquisitive of truth is good a year after, but that which is written because a sermon must be writ is musty the next day.”