Joseph Pulitzer Quotes

#1. Newspapers should have no friends.

Joseph Pulitzer

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

Joseph Pulitzer

#3. Money is the great power today. Men sell their souls for it. Women sell their bodies for it. Others worship it. The money power has grown so great that the issue of all issues is whether the corporation shall rule this country or the country shall again rule the corporations.

Joseph Pulitzer

#4. A newspaper that is true to its purpose concerns itself not only with the way things are
but with the way they ought to be.

Joseph Pulitzer

#5. 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.

Joseph Pulitzer

#6. 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 accuracy, accuracy, accuracy.

Joseph Pulitzer

#7. 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.

Joseph Pulitzer

#8. They call me the father of illustrated journalism. What folly! I never thought any such thing. I had a small newspaper, which had been dead for years, and I was trying in every way to build up its circulation. What could I use for bait? A picture, of course.

Joseph Pulitzer

#9. 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.

Joseph Pulitzer

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

Joseph Pulitzer

#11. 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.

Joseph Pulitzer

#12. I want to talk to a nation, not to a select committee.

Joseph Pulitzer

#13. 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.

Joseph Pulitzer

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

Joseph Pulitzer

#15. 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.

Joseph Pulitzer