Quotes from 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.

Put it before them briefly so they will read it, clearly so they will appreciate it, picturesquely so they will remember it and, above all, accurately so they will be guided by its light.

The American people want something terse, forcible, picturesque, striking - something that will arrest their attention, enlist their sympathy, arouse their indignation, stimulate their imagination, convince their reason, awaken their conscience.

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 both my privilege and my weakness, that correction is the only road to improvement, and that my quick temper and illness are entitled to some consideration.

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, polish of style, weighing of words.

Publicity, publicity, PUBLICITY is the greatest moral factor and force in our public life.

Performance is better than promise. Exuberant assurances are cheap.

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 Government at Washington owing its retention to the power of the millionaires rather than to the will of millions.

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.

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

Our Republic and its press will rise or fall together.

If you will give the matter a moment's thought, you'll see that memory is the highest faculty of the human mind.

Our republic and its press will rise and fall together.

There is not a crime, there is not a dodge, there is not a trick, there is not a swindle, there is not a vice which does not live by secrecy.

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 and a mockery.

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

Newspapers should have no friends.

Principles, convictions and motives are neither sold nor bargained for!

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 years, I have only been three times in 'The World' building. Most people think I'm dead or living in Europe in complete retirement.

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 to a man who speaks to a million people a day in the columns of a great paper.

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 influence upon the minds and morals of the people.

My especial object is to help the poor; the rich can help themselves. I believe in self-made men.

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 training

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, because circulation means advertising, and advertising means money, and money means independence.