Joseph Pulitzer

“It is to such men as Abraham Lincoln and Jefferson and Jackson and Franklin, all most lowly born, that we owe most of our greatness as a nation.”

“The American people want something terse, forcible, picturesque, striking - something that will arrest their attention, enlist their sympathy, arouse their indignation, stimulate their imagi...”

“I desire to assist in attracting to this profession young men of character and ability, also to help those already engaged in the profession to acquire the highest moral and intellectual tra...”

“If a newspaper is to be of real service to the public, it must have a big circulation: first, because its news and its comments must reach the largest possible number of people; second, beca...”

“I can do much, I can do everything for a man who will be my friend. I can give him power; I can give him wealth. I can give him reputation - the power, the wealth, the reputation which come...”

“Don't be sensitive if I should, in future, seem brusque, harsh, or even unjust in my criticism. I sincerely hope I never shall be; but if I should, remember that fault-finding is perhaps bot...”

“We all want prosperity, but not at the expense of liberty. Poverty is not as great a danger to liberty as is wealth, with its corrupting, demoralizing influences. Let us never have a Governm...”

“What a newspaper needs in its news, in its headlines, and on its editorial page is terseness, humor, descriptive power, satire, originality, good literary style, clever condensation, and acc...”

“I breakfast when I get up, lunch when I get the chance. If I never get it, I forget it. Sometimes I dine at seven, sometimes at midnight, sometimes not at all; and I never get to bed until f...”

“An able, disinterested, public-spirited press, with trained intelligence to know the right and courage to do it, can preserve that public virtue without which popular government is a sham an...”

“I am deeply interested in the progress and elevation of journalism, having spent my life in that profession, regarding it as a noble profession and one of unequaled importance for its influe...”

“I really think one of the most extraordinary things in the world is the amount of noise a child can make.”

“Performance is better than promise. Exuberant assurances are cheap.”

“A cynical, mercenary, demagogic press will in time produce a people as base as itself.”

“The power to mould the future of the Republic will be in the hands of the journalists of future generations.”

“We are a democracy, and there is only one way to get a democracy on its feet in the matter of its individual, its social, its municipal, its State, its national conduct, and that is by keepi...”

“Whatever my trouble had been at first, it developed into separation of the retina in both eyes. From the day on which I first consulted the oculist up to the present time, about twenty-four...”

“I would rather have one article a day of this sort; and these ten or twenty lines might readily represent a whole day's hard work in the way of concentrated, intense thinking and revision, p...”

“It only serves to show what sort of person a man must be who can't even get testimonials. No, no; if a man brings references, it proves nothing; but if he can't, it proves a great deal.”