Over the course of the ODNP project, I have been collecting historical quotes about newspapers and the newspaper business. I thought this would be a good time to share some of my favorites with readers of the blog… Enjoy!

“This is what really happened, reported by a free press to a free people.  It is the raw material of history; it is the story of our own times.”
Henry Steel Commager

“Newspapers cannot be defined by the second word—paper.  They’ve got to be defined by the first word—news.”
Arthur Sulzberg, Jr.

“A good newspaper is a nation talking to itself.”
Arthur Miller

“The newspaper is a greater treasure to the people than uncounted millions of gold.”
Henry Ward Beecher

“Were it left to me to decide if we should have a government without newspapers, or newspapers without a government, I should not hesitate a moment to prefer the latter.”
Thomas Jefferson

“Most of us probably feel we couldn’t be free without newspapers, and that is the real reason we want newspapers to be free.”
Edward R. Murrow

“People don’t actually read newspapers.  They step into them every morning like a hot bath.”
Marshall McLuhan

“Every time a newspaper dies, even a bad one, the country moves a little closer to authoritarianism…”
Richard Kluger

“I’d love to rise from the grave every ten years or so and go buy a few newspapers.”
Luis Bunuel

“All I know is what I read in the papers.”
Will Rogers