51 Notable News Quotes

In the ever-evolving world of news, certain words and phrases capture the essence of pivotal moments, resonating with audiences globally. These notable news quotes serve not just as reflections of events, but as powerful tools that shape public discourse and influence societal perspectives. In this collection, we bring together 51 of the most memorable and impactful news quotes that have sparked conversations, inspired action, and left an indelible mark on history. Whether it’s a declaration of triumph, a call to action, or a moment of introspection, these quotes offer a glimpse into the minds of leaders, change-makers, and everyday individuals at the heart of the stories that defined their time. Join us as we explore these compelling snippets of dialogue that continue to echo across time.

1. “We are not afraid to entrust the American people with unpleasant facts, foreign ideas, alien philosophies, and competitive values. For a nation that is afraid to let its people judge the truth and falsehood in an open market is a nation that is afraid of its people."[Remarks on the 20th Anniversary of the Voice of America; Department of Health, Education, and Welfare, February 26, 1962]” - John F. Kennedy

2. “I would not know how I am supposed to feel about many stories if not for the fact that the TV news personalities make sad faces for sad stories and happy faces for happy stories. ” - Dave Barry

3. “A good newspaper, I suppose, is a nation talking to itself.” - Arthur Miller

4. “We have currently a built-in allergy to unpleasant or disturbing information. Our mass media reflect this. But unless we get up off our fat surpluses and recognize that television in the main is being used to distract, delude, amuse, and insulate us, then television and those who finance it, those who look at it, and those who work at it, may see a totally different picture too late. ” - Edward R. Murrow

5. “Our major obligation is not to mistake slogans for solutions.” - Edward R. Murrow

6. “People say conversation is a lost art; how often I have wished it were.” - Edward R. Murrow

7. “A nation of sheep will beget a government of wolves.” - Edward R. Murrow

8. “When the New York Times scratches its head, get ready for total baldness as you tear out your hair.” - Christopher Hitchens

9. “. . . the newspapers of Utopia, he had long ago decided, would be terribly dull.” - Arthur C. Clarke

10. “News is something somebody doesn't want printed; all else is advertising.” - William Randolph Hearst

11. “But if we define the Megaphone as the composite of the hundreds of voices we hear each day that come to us from people we don't know, via high-tech sources, it's clear that a significant and ascendant component of that voice has become bottom-dwelling, shrill, incurious, ranting, and agenda-driven. It strives to antagonize us, make us feel anxious, ineffective, and alone; convince us that the world is full of enemies and of people stupider and less agreeable than ourselves; is dedicated to the idea that, outside the sphere of our immediate experience, the world works in a different, more hostile, less knowable manner. This braindead tendency is viral and manifests intermittently; while it is the blood in the veins of some of our media figures, it flickers on and off in others.” - George Saunders

12. “If you don't like the news, go out and make some of your own.” - Wes Nisker

13. “Would you like to know your future?If your answer is yes, think again. Not knowing is the greatest life motivator.So enjoy, endure, survive each moment as it comes to you in its proper sequence -- a surprise.” - Vera Nazarian

14. “Looking back, I still can't believe how unprofessional the news media was. So much spin, so few hard facts. All those digestible sound bites from an army of 'experts' all contradicting one another, all trying to seem more 'shocking' and 'in-depth' than the last one. It was all so confusing, nobody seemed to know what to do.” - Max Brooks

15. “You know what's truly weird about any financial crisis? We made it up. Currency, money, finance, they're all social inventions. When the sun comes up in the morning it's shining on the same physical landscape, all the atoms are in place.” - Bruce Sterling

16. “Media work needs ideals. Maybe thirty years from now, after I retire, I'll see the media mature and make the transition from political party, interest group, and corporate to truly public. But over the next ten years, the encroachment of commercialism and worldliness will loom much larger than the democratization we imagine. -Jin Yongquan in China Ink” - Judy Polumbaum

17. “Our stable and eternal verities are being challenged. There's a kind of postmodern breakdown in journalism. The breadth of information sources and the speed of transmission are growing; but the traditional gravity of news has eroded. -Jin Yongquan ” - Judy Polumbaum

18. “I think that of all the principles for journalism, the most important is to complicate simple things and simplify complicated things. At first sight, you may think something is simple, but it may conceal a great deal. However, facing a very complex thing, you should find out its essence. -Jin Yongquan” - Judy Polumbaum

19. “Th' newspaper does ivrything f'r us. It runs th' polis foorce an' th' banks, commands th' milishy, controls th' ligislachure, baptizes th' young, marries th' foolish, comforts th' afflicted, afflicts th' comfortable, buries th' dead an' roasts thim aftherward.” - Finley Peter Dunne

20. “Our willingness to believe the news is, in many cases, not entirely innocent.” - Eula Biss

21. “One reason that cats are happier than people is that they have no newspapers.” - Gwendolyn Brooks

22. “Now he turned the radio on to the news. As we did our separate chores, we listened and commented idly to each other on what we heard—the politics, the plane crashes and crimes, the large disasters of the day, which we all use to keep the smaller, more long-term sorrows at bay.” - Sue Miller

23. “All the papers that matter live off their advertisements, and the advertisers exercise an indirect censorship over news.” - George Orwell

24. “Without news to feed it, the biggest story starves.” - Emlyn Williams

25. “My Miracle, living through a Traumatic brain Injury” - Rodney Barnes

26. “It may be escapist, but if I have a choice between watching the news or reading a book which gets me to see the world through different eyes, I will always choose the latter!” - Christina Westover

27. “Cram them full of non-combustible data, chock them so damned full of 'facts' they feel stuffed, but absolutely 'brilliant' with information. Then they’ll feel they’re thinking, they’ll get a sense of motion without moving. And they’ll be happy, because facts of that sort don’t change. Don’t give them any slippery stuff like philosophy or sociology to tie things up with. That way lies melancholy.” - Ray Bradbury

28. “كل يوم أكتشف في وطني مجداً جديداًوعاراً جديداًأخباراً ترفع الرأسوأخرى ترفع الضغط” - محمد الماغوط

29. “The ordinary public is a puppet of worthless news and media.” - Santosh Kalwar

30. “Most neuroses and some psychoses can be traced to the unnecessary and unhealthy habit of daily wallowing in the troubles and sins of five billion strangers.” - Robert A. Heinlein

31. “The greatest influence over content was necessity--they had holes to fill on every page and jammed in any vaguely newsworthy string of words, provided it didn't include expletives, which they were apparently saving for their own use around the office.” - Tom Rachman

32. “I came only to report the news, to gather information. I didn't come to find out the truth.” - Siriworn Kaewkan

33. “Suicides? Heart attacks? The papers didn't seem interested. The world was full of ways to die, too many to cover. Newsworthy deaths had to be exceptional. Most people go unobserved.” - Haruki Murakami

34. “People differ to such a degree they agree on nothing,Except death that is, and even on that they disagree.Some say the soul goes on after the death of the bodyWhile others claim the soul, with the body, dies too.” - Mutannabi

35. “All of the strife in this world is due to three people: a newscaster, a news seeker, and a news listener.” - Ibn al-Qasim al-Hakim

36. “لا شيء سوى الترهات هنا، الباحثون عن الحقيقة لا يقرؤون الصّحف” - Ahlam Mustafa

37. “إن ضغط الدم و القلق و الأرق الذى يصيبنى من الحقائق أفضل من الخنوثة و التراخى و الفتور الذى يصيبنى من التطامن و التفاؤل.إن تطامن يربى الشحم على قلبى و شعورى,و يميتنى بالسكتة لأقل خيبة أمل و لأتفه خبر غير متوقع,و كل الأخبار تصبح فى هذه الحالة غير متوقعة.” - مصطفى محمود

38. “The news isn't there to tell you what happened. It's there to tell you what it wants you to hear or what it thinks you want to hear.” - Joss Whedon

39. “I killed the Google Alert I used to have on myself two years ago. I don’t need any more information about myself. I get more than enough of that just by being me.” - Lev Grossman

40. “You totally need to watch the news.""Can't.""Why?""It's too depressing.""Right, because hanging with dead people isn't.” - Darynda Jones

41. “The news media are, for the most part, the bringers of bad news… and it’s not entirely the media’s fault, bad news gets higher ratings and sells more papers than good news.” - Peter McWilliams

42. “Voting, we might even say, is the next to last refuge of the politically impotent. The last refuge is, of course, giving your opinion to a pollster, who will get a version of it through a desiccated question, and then will submerge it in a Niagara of similar opinions, and convert them into--what else?--another piece of news. Thus we have here a great loop of impotence: The news elicits from you a variety of opinions about which you can do nothing except to offer them as more news, about which you can do nothing.” - Neil Postman

43. “When other people are grieving, the newspaperman turns efficient.” - Stieg Larsson

44. “Popular culture is a place where pity is called compassion, flattery is called love, propaganda is called knowledge, tension is called peace, gossip is called news, and auto-tune is called singing.” - Criss Jami

45. “Apparently even the most awful tragedies, and the people they'd ruined, got a little stale after a while.” - Tom Perrotta

46. “That could be a very sexy story.” - LynDee Walker

47. “Life goes on in the same manner,evil wins and peace is slaughtered.Change the channel, change the view,tired of the same reruns on the evening news.” - Susie Clevenger

48. “What most people want to keep under wraps (from reporters) is trivial: petty jealousies, professional feuds, etc. By contrast, most of the things they have thought about most seriously all their lives they are perfectly winning to uncover.” - Thomas Boswell

49. “People would say bad things about you, because it is the only way their insignificant self can feel better than you.” - Dennis E. Adonis

50. “Usually I spare myself from the news, because if it’s not propaganda, then it’s one threat or another exaggerated to the point of absurdity, or it’s the tragedy of storm-quake-tsunami, of bigotry and oppression misnamed justice, of hatred passed off as righteousness and honor called dishonorable, all jammed in around advertisements in which a gecko sells insurance, a bear sells toilet tissue, a dog sells cars, a gorilla sells investment advisers, a tiger sells cereal, and an elephant sells a drug that will improve your lung capacity, as if no human being in America any longer believes any other human being, but trusts only the recommendations of animals.” - Dean Koontz

51. “Rumors spread faster than news and news spreads faster than the happenings” - Amit Abraham