It is well to remember that freedom through the press is the thing that comes first. Most of us probably feel we couldn’t be free without newspapers, and that is the real reason we want the newspapers to be free.   ––Edward R. Murrow

Newspaper editors are men who separate the wheat from the chaff, and then print the chaff.    ––Adlai Stevenson

The only authors whom I acknowledge as American are the journalists. They, indeed, are not great writers, but they speak the language of their countrymen, and make themselves heard by them. ––Alexis de Tocqueville

The art of newspaper paragraphing is to stroke a platitude until it purrs like an epigram.         ––Don Marquis

Along with responsible newspapers we must have responsible readers. ––Arthur Hays Sulzberger

Journalism largely consists in saying “Lord Jones Dead” to people who never knew Lord Jones was alive.           ––G.K. Chesterton

A newspaper is a device for making the ignorant more ignorant and the crazy crazier.            ––H.L. Mencken

All I know is what I see in the papers.                        ––Will Rogers

In our country I am inclined to think that almost, if not quite, the most important profession is that of the newspaperman, including the man of magazines, especially the cheap magazines, and the weeklies. ––Theodore Roosevelt

Newspapers, television networks, and magazines have sometimes been outrageously abusive, untruthful, arrogant, and hypoocritical. But it hardly follows that elimination of a strong and independent press is the way to eliminate abusiveness, untruth, arrogance, or hypocrisy from government itself.

                                                                     —Potter Stewart

Jouranlism is in fact history on the run.                  —Thomas Griffith

I have yet to see a piece of writing, political or nonpolitical, that doesn’t have a slant. All writing slants the way the writer leans, and no man is born perpendicular, although many men are born upright. The beauty of the American free press is that the slants and the twists and the distortions come from so many directions, and the special interests are so numerous, the reader must sift and sort and check and countercheck in order to find out that the score is.                                               ––E.B. White

(Each week this column features quotations gleaned from the readings and experiences of our editors, reporters, readers, and friends. All are invited to submit quotations for inclusion here. They may be sent to Gleanings, c/o The Newtown Bee, 5 Church Hill Road, Newtown, CT 06470 or emailed to editor@thebee.com.)