55 Inspiring Journalism Quotes

In the ever-evolving world of journalism, words possess the power to enlighten, provoke thought, and inspire change. As journalists weave narratives that inform and engage, they often draw inspiration from the very essence of their craft. This collection of 55 inspiring journalism quotes stands as a testament to the enduring impact and responsibility of the journalistic voice. From legendary reporters to modern-day truth-seekers, these quotes encapsulate the spirit of inquiry and the unyielding pursuit of truth that defines the profession. Whether you are a seasoned journalist, an aspiring writer, or simply an aficionado of the written word, these quotes will ignite your passion and commitment to the values that uphold the integrity of journalism.

1. “This seems charmingly paradoxical: scientists seek one truth but often voice many opinions; journalists often speak of many truths while voicing a uniform view.” - Christopher Essex

2. “You're miserable, edgy and tired. You're in the perfect mood for journalism.” - Warren Ellis

3. “I believe in equality for everyone, except reporters and photographers.” - Mahatma Gandhi

4. “Journalism largely consists in saying "Lord Jones is dead" to people who never knew Lord Jones was alive.” - G.K. Chesterton

5. “In the English language, it all comes down to this: Twenty-six letters, when combined correctly, can create magic. Twenty -six letters form the foundation of a free, informed society.” - John Grogan

6. “But my way of writing is rather to think aloud, and follow my own humours, than much to consider who is listening to me; and, if I stop to consider what is proper to be said to this or that person, I shall soon come to doubt whether any part at all is proper.” - Thomas De Quincey

7. “Many journalists now are no more than channelers and echoers of what George Orwell called the 'official truth'. They simply cipher and transmit lies. It really grieves me that so many of my fellow journalists can be so manipulated that they become really what the French describe as 'functionaires', functionaries, not journalists. Many journalists become very defensive when you suggest to them that they are anything but impartial and objective. The problem with those words 'impartiality' and 'objectivity' is that they have lost their dictionary meaning. They've been taken over... [they] now mean the establishment point of view... Journalists don't sit down and think, 'I'm now going to speak for the establishment.' Of course not. But they internalise a whole set of assumptions, and one of the most potent assumptions is that the world should be seen in terms of its usefulness to the West, not humanity.” - John Pilger

8. “I think I know what military fame is; to be killed on the field of battle and have your name misspelled in the newspapers.” - William T. Sherman

9. “I don't think a tough question is disrespectful.” - Helen Thomas

10. “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

11. “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

12. “We are beckoned to see the world through a one-way mirror, as if we are threatened and innocent and the rest of humanity is threatening, or wretched, or expendable. Our memory is struggling to rescue the truth that human rights were not handed down as privileges from a parliament, or a boardroom, or an institution, but that peace is only possible with justice and with information that gives us the power to act justly.” - John Pilger

13. “The image of the journalist as wallflower at the orgy has been replaced by the journalist as the life of the party.” - Nora Ephron

14. “He understood then that all his exploits as a reporter, the feats that had won him such recognition and fame, were merely an attempt to keep his most ancient fears at bay, a stratagem for taking refuge behind a lens to test whether reality was more tolerable from that perspective.” - Isabel Allende

15. “So much for Objective Journalism. Don't bother to look for it here--not under any byline of mine; or anyone else I can think of. With the possible exception of things like box scores, race results, and stock market tabulations, there is no such thing as Objective Journalism. The phrase itself is a pompous contradiction in terms.” - Hunter S. Thompson

16. “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

17. “All you have to do [to win a Pulitzer Prize] is spend your life running from one awful place to another, write about every horrible thing you see. The civilized world reads about it, then forgets it, but pats you on the head for doing it and gives you a reward as appreciation for changing nothing.” - David Baldacci

18. “In the developed countries of the capitalist world, the mass media are beginning to become businesses, and huge businesses at that. The freedom of journalists is now becoming, in most cases, a very relative thing: it ends where the interests of the business begin... In socialist areas, it is enough to recall that the means of social communication are the monopoly of the party.” - Helder Camara

19. “The foreign correspondent is frequently the only means of getting an important story told, or of drawing the world's attention to disasters in the making or being covered up. Such an important role is risky in more ways than one. It can expose the correspondent to actual physical danger; but there is also the moral danger of indulging in sensationalism and dehumanizing the sufferer. This danger immediately raises the question of the character and attitude of the correspondent, because the same qualities of mind which in the past separated a Conrad from a Livingstone, or a Gainsborough from the anonymous painter of Francis Williams, are still present and active in the world today. Perhaps this difference can best be put in one phrase: the presence or absence of respect for the human person.” - Chinua Achebe

20. “To read a newspaper is to refrain from reading something worthwhile. [....] The first discipline of education must therefore be to refuse resolutely to feed the mind with canned chatter.” - Aleister Crowley

21. “I became a journalist because I did not want to rely on newspapers for information.” - Christopher Hitchens

22. “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

23. “I think being a liberal, in the true sense, is being nondoctrinaire, nondogmatic, non-committed to a cause - but examining each case on its merits. Being left of center is another thing; it's a political position. I think most newspapermen by definition have to be liberal; if they're not liberal, by my definition of it, then they can hardly be good newspapermen. If they're preordained dogmatists for a cause, then they can't be very good journalists; that is, if they carry it into their journalism."[Interview with Ron Powers (Chicago Sun Times) for Playboy, 1973]” - Walter Cronkite

24. “Call no man lucky until he is dead, but there have been moment of rare satisfaction in the often random and fragmented life of the radical freelance scribbler. I have lived to see Ronald Reagan called “a useful idiot for Kremlin propaganda” by his former idolators; to see the General Secretary of the Communist Party of the Soviet Union regarded with fear and suspicion by the Communist Party of Czechoslovakia (which blacked out an interview with Miloš Forman broadcast live on Moscow TV); to see Mao Zedong relegated like a despot of antiquity. I have also had the extraordinary pleasure of revisiting countries—Greece, Spain, Zimbabwe, and others—that were dictatorships or colonies when first I saw them. Other mini-Reichs have melted like dew, often bringing exiled and imprisoned friends blinking modestly and honorably into the glare. E pur si muove—it still moves, all right.” - Christopher Hitchens

25. “News is only the first rough draft of history.” - Alan Barth

26. “The Times is a paper which is seldom found in any hands but those of the highly educated.” - Sir Arthur Conan Doyle

27. “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

28. “One thing I learned as a journalist is that there is at least one disgruntled person in every workplace in America -- and at least double that number with a conscience. Hard as they try, they simply can't turn their heads away from an injustice when they see one taking place.” - Michael Francis Moore

29. “He cannot deny a certain relief in being able to sift through academic tomes, fulfilling his journalistic duty without having to barge past security guards at the Arab League or grab man-on-the-street from women at the market. This library work is easily his favorite part of reporting so far.” - Tom Rachman

30. “(aspiring journalist to Carl Kolchak)'Andy knows I want to be a reporter. Like you'This took me by surprise. 'Sallie, my dear, nobody wants to be a reporter like me.” - Elizabeth Massie

31. “The primary purposes of the political pamphlets of the early 1700s were neither to enlighten nor educate the masses, but to incite partisan conversation and spread commensurate ideas . . . Facts were not permitted to fetter the views they espoused, and the restraints of objective journalistic credibility were discarded by pamphleteers bent on promoting subjective slant to an insatiable general public for whom political dissonance was an integral part of social interaction.” - Gavin John Adams

32. “[O]nce demagogy and falsehoods become routine, there isn’t much for the political journalist to do except handicap the race and report on the candidate’s mood.” - George Packer

33. “In fact, among the people I met, the term soviet served essentially as a synonym for 'fucked up'. I'd been in the country about three days when a car that was sent to take me to an interview failed to start. After several attempts to get it going, the driver turned to me, smiled wearily and explained: 'Soviet car'. By that time, that was all the explanation I needed.” - Anthony DeCurtis

34. “You have to get up pretty early in the morning to invent the news.” - Lauren Beukes

35. “They're called 'facts', and my role is to amplify those, not cheerlead. And I don't care at all what you think of my motives.” - Glenn Greenwald

36. “A bug lies in quiet repose;when he passed no one knows.Did he suffer, was he pained?Before he died, was knowledge gained?Were all life’s pressures much too great.To put upon so small a weight?Although not one for pessimism,I think he died of journalism!” - Nikhil Sharda

37. “Like so many others of my tenure and temperament—stubborn ancients, I suppose—web reporting is anathema to everything I love about newspapering: getting a tip, developing leads, fleshing-out the details, then telling the story. Now it stops with the tip. Just verify (hopefully!) and post it. I didn’t write stories anymore; I 'produced content.” - Chris Rose

38. “Journalism is not a precise science, it's a crude art” - Dan Rather

39. “As an editor, you develop a B.S. meter—an internal warning system that signals caution about journalism that doesn't feel trustworthy. Sometimes it's a quote or incident that's too perfect —a feeling I always had when reading stories by Stephen Glass in the New Republic. Sometimes it's too many errors of fact, the overuse of anonymous sources, or signs that a reporter hasn't dealt fairly with people or evidence. And sometimes it's a combination of flaws that produces a ring of falsity, the whiff of a bad egg. There's no journalist who sets off my bullshit alarm like Ron Suskind.” - Jacob Weisberg

40. “June 17, 1972. Nine o'clock Saturday morning. Early for the telephone. Woodward fumbled for the receiver and snapped awake. The city editor of the Washington Post was on the line. Five men had been arrested earlier that morning in a burglary attempt at Democratic headquarters, carrying photographic equipment and electronic gear. Could he come in?” - Carl Bernstein

41. “The invariable question, asked only half-mockingly of reporters by editors at the Post (and then up the hierarchical line of editors) was 'What have you done for me today?' Yesterday was for the history books, not newspapers.-- Carl Bernstein, Bob Woodward” - Carl Bernstein

42. “Bradlee had been recruited with the idea that the New York Times need nod exercise absolute preeminence in American journalism.That vision had suffered a setback in 1971 when the Times published the Pentagon Papers. Though the Post was the second news organization to obtain a copy of the secret study of the Vietnam war, Bradlee noted that 'there was blood on every word' of the Times' initial stories. Bradlee could convey his opinions with a single disgusted glance at an indolent reporter or editor.-- Carl Bernstein, Bob Woodward” - Carl Bernstein

43. “Woodward said that he had told no one the name of Deep Throat.Mrs. Graham paused. 'Tell me,' she said.Woodward froze. He said he would give her the name if she wanted. He was praying she wouldn't press it. Mrs. Graham laughed, touched his arm and said she was only kidding, she didn't really want to carry that burden around with her. Woodward took a bite of his eggs, which were cold.-- Carl Bernstein, Bob Woodward” - Carl Bernstein

44. “But you're absolutely sure we're right?' The question carried an intensity absent from the previous conversation. 'I remember talking with Henry Kissinger,' she continued, 'and he came up and said 'What's the matter, don't you think we're going to be re-elected? You were wrong on Haldeman.' And he seemed upset and said something about it being terribly, terribly unfair.' If there's anyone who has not been wronged, Woodward said, it is Bob Haldeman. It was the most definite statement Woodward made during lunch.'Oh, really,' said Mrs. Graham. 'I'm glad to hear you say that, because I was worried.' She paused. 'You've reassured me. You really have.' She looked at Woodward. Her face said, Do better.-- Carl Bernstein, Bob Woodward” - Carl Bernstein

45. “Rosenfeld went to work for the Herald Tribune after his graduation from Syracuse University and has always been an editor, never a reporter. He was inclined to worry that too many reporters on the metropolitan staff were incompetent, and thought even the best reporters could be saved from self-destruction only by the skills of an editor. His natural distrust of reporters was particularly acute on the Watergate story, where the risks were very great, and he was in the uncomfortable position of having to trust Bernstein and Woodward more than he had ever trusted any reporters.-- Carl Bernstein, Bob Woodward” - Carl Bernstein

46. “Aware that much of the story was out of his hands, he tried to exercise what control he could: he hovered around the reporters' typewriters as they wrote, passed them questions as they talked on the phone to sources, demanded to be briefed after they hung up or returned from a meeting. Now, gulping down antacid tablets, Rosenfeld grilled Bernstein and Woodward to find out how solid this latest story was.” - Carl Bernstein

47. “The managing editor shared Bernstein's fondness for doping things out on the basis of sketchy information. At the same time, he was cautious about what eventually went into print. On more than one occasion, he told Bernstein and Woodward to consider delaying a story or, if necessary, to pull it at the last minute if they had any doubts. 'I don't care if it's a word, a phrase, a sentence, a paragraph, a whole story or an entire series of stories,' he said. 'When in doubt, leave it out.'-- Carl Bernstein, Bob Woodward” - Carl Bernstein

48. “Simons, as restrained as Bradlee could be hard-charging and obstreperous, liked to tell of watching Bradlee grind his cigarrettes out in a demitasse cup during a formal dinner party. Bradlee was one of the few persons who could pull that kind of thing off and leave the hostess saying how charming he was.-- Carl Bernstein, Bob Woodward” - Carl Bernstein

49. “A good businessman must have nose for business the same way a journalist has nose for news. In places where people see a lot of obstacles, I see a lot of opportunities. A good businessman sees where others don’t see.” - Orji Uzor Kalu

50. “We journalists make it a point to know very little about an extremely wide variety of topics; this is how we stay objective.” - Dave Barry

51. “He reads every book in his home but it is not enough. The country boy craves stories. He devours every poem and fable in his school and library. Still he hungers. For stories.” - Jennifer Lanthier

52. “With the development of the printing press, not only could text be mass-produced quickly, it could also be mass-produced quickly and incorrectly.” - The Bureau Chiefs

53. “Most info-Web-media-newspaper types have a hard time swallowing the idea that knowledge is reached (mostly) by removing junk from peoples heads” - Nassim Nicholas Taleb

54. “One of the cardinal rules of journalism: Once you have cabled a story you must stick by it and back it up, unless something completely overwhelming proves you to have been wrong. In such a case, just drop the matter.” - Wynant Davis Hubbard

55. “Journalists should be watchdogs, not lapdogs.” - Newton Lee