A Quote by H. L. Mencken

The only time you have a free press is when you own one.

H. L. Mencken

Quote Topics

Free Free Press Only Only Time Own Press Time

Quote Author

H. L. Mencken
American - Writer
September 12, 1880 - January 29, 1956

As a conservative who believes in limited government, I believe the only check on government power in real time is a free and independent press. A free press ensures the flow of information to the public, and let me say, during a time when the role of government in our lives and in our enterprises seems to grow every day--both at home and abroad - ensuring the vitality of a free and independent press is more important than ever.

Mike Pence

The Government's power to censor the press was abolished so that the press would remain forever free to censure the Government. The press was protected so that it could bare the secrets of government and inform the people. Only a free and unrestrained press can effectively expose deception in government.

Hugo Black

The Press was protected so that it could bare the secrets of the government and inform the people. Only a free and unrestrained press can effectively expose deception in government. And paramount among the responsibilities of a free press is the duty to prevent any part of the government from deceiving the people.

Hugo Black

Without a free press there can be no free society. That is axiomatic. However, freedom of the press is not an end in itself but a means to the end of a free society. The scope and nature of the constitutional guarantee of the freedom of the press are to be viewed and applied in that light.

Felix Frankfurter

And to me, that is the greatest danger, that people start questioning basic facts and start not understanding the importance of democratic institutions such as the free press. I mean, to call the press the enemy is dangerous and just remarkably bizarre. The press is the only profession protected in the Constitution because of how important the framers viewed the press. But in authoritarian regimes, they control the press. And to me, going down an authoritarian path is the greatest danger that we face as a republic.

Ted Lieu

I'm very much in support of the free press, but the free press ought to be educational and informative. And I believe they have fallen down recently on that.

Samuel Dash

Yet we can maintain a free society only if we recognize that in a free society no one can win all the time. No one can have his own way all the time, and no one is right all the time.

Richard M. Nixon

[Vladimir] Putin is an enemy of the free press. The U.S. celebrates free press.

Benjamin E. Sasse

In Britian we have a free press. It's not a pretty press, but it's free. The people who can't bear the Daily Mail, they say: 'you should ban it'. No, no, no, no, you don't ban it... you don't buy it.

Ian Hislop

The first thing dictators do is finish free press, to establish censorship. There is no doubt that a free press is the first enemy of dictatorship.

Fidel Castro

As a conservative who believes in limited government, I believe that the only check on government power in real time is a free and independent press.

Mike Pence

For all time to come, the freedom and purity of the press are the test of national virtue and independence. No writer for the press, however humble, is free from the burden of keeping his purpose high and his integrity white.

John Boyle O'Reilly

Everyone asks for freedom for himself, The man free love, the businessman free trade, The writer and talker free speech and free press.

Robert Frost

It is almost superfluous to say that there is no such thing as a free and independent press among the mainstream news media today. In fact, the major media more resembles a propaganda machine than it does a free press.

Chuck Baldwin

Press freedom does not mean that the press should be above the law. While it's vital that a free press can tell truth to power, it is equally important that those in power can tell truth to the press.