Our security depends on the Allied Powers winning against aggressors. The Axis Powers intend to destroy democracy, it is anathema ...to them. We cannot provide that aid if the public are against it; therefore, it is our responsibility to persuade the public that aid to the victims of aggression is aid to American security. I expect the members of my administration to take every opportunity to speak to this issue wherever they are invited to address public forums in the weeks ahead.LESSATTRIBUTION DETAIL »
Journalism over here is not only an obsession but a drawback that cannot be overrated. Politicians are frightened of the press, an...d in the same way as bull-fighting has a brutalising effect upon Spain (of which she is unconscious), headlines of murder, rape, and rubbish, excite and demoralise the American public.LESSATTRIBUTION DETAIL »
It is precisely the purpose of the public opinion generated by the press to make the public incapable of judging, to insinuate int...o it the attitude of someone irresponsible, uninformed.LESSATTRIBUTION DETAIL »
The failures of the press have contributed immensely to the emergence of a talk-show nation, in which public discourse is reduced ...to ranting and raving and posturing. We now have a mainstream press whose news agenda is increasingly influenced by this netherworld.LESSATTRIBUTION DETAIL »
He had first discovered a propensity for savagery in the acrid lavatories of a minor English public school where he used to press ...the heads of the new boys into the ceramic bowl and pull the flush upon them to drown their gurgling protests.LESSATTRIBUTION DETAIL »
Because of the enormous size of the public, television advertisers face problems of a different nature to advertisers in the press... or even on posters. The readers of even the most widely circulated newspapers represent only a relatively small section of the population, and quite a number of facts have been accumulated about the interests, prejudices and habits of the readers of different papers; posters are placed in definite localities and the population of that locality, in contrast to other localities in that area, and of the different regions of England can, if necessary, be estimated. But with television, all these sensational calculations disappear; the advertiser is reaching practically the whole population within range of the transmitter. He may well ignore the poorest people, because they are not likely to have a set, and the richest and best educated because (as Dorothy Sayers shrewdly pointed out) they "buy what they want when they want it" and are not likely to be influenced by mass advertisements; but between those two extremes he has to try to please and portray Everyman and Everywoman and, above all, must try to offend none of them.LESSATTRIBUTION DETAIL »
No officer should be required or permitted to take part in the management of political organizations, caucuses, conventions, or el...ection campaigns. Their right to vote and to express their views on public questions, either orally or through the press, is not denied, provided it does not interfere with the discharge of their official duties. No assessment for political purposes on officers or subordinates should be allowed.LESSATTRIBUTION DETAIL »
Without general elections, without unrestricted freedom of press and assembly, without a free struggle of opinion, life dies out i...n every public institution, becomes a mere semblance of life, in which only the bureaucracy remains as the active element. Public life gradually falls asleep, a few dozen party leaders of inexhaustible energy and boundless experience direct and rule.... Such conditions must inevitably cause a brutalization of public life: attempted assassinations, shootings of hostages, etc.LESSATTRIBUTION DETAIL »
We have ... succeeded in enlightening public opinion. We have battered down the prejudice of the press. We have overcome the apath...y and passive indifference of the medical profession. We have awakened the consciousness of the Protestant churches and their ethical leaders to the moral necessity of birth control. Yet this enlightenment, unless directed and applied, will be extinguished by the winds of dogmas unless it is applied like a hydro-electric power to the driving of the machinery of political and legislative action.LESSATTRIBUTION DETAIL »