Juan Williams Quotes

If I'd written all the truth I knew for the past ten years, about 600 people - including me - would be rotting in prison cells from Rio to Seattle today. Absolute truth is a very rare and dangerous commodity in the context of professional journalism.

What I think is highly inappropriate is what's going on across the Internet, a kind of political jihad against Dan Rather and CBS News that's quite outrageous.

There's some irony in playing a journalist after some of the stuff that has been written about me, but it's a great profession, particularly investigative journalism.

I'm a big fan of British journalists like 'The Independent's Robert Fisk, but it's hard to find voices like his in the U.S.

Years ago, NPR tried to stop me from going on "The Factor." When I refused, they insisted that I not identify myself as an NPR journalist. I asked them if they thought people did not know where I appeared on the air as a daily talk show host, national correspondent and news analyst. They refused to budge.

For my part though silent I have at times felt that I would prefer to be governed by Davis, Beauregard & Bragg, [than] to be thus abused by a set of dirty newspaper scribblers who have the impudence of Satan. They come into camp, poke around among the lazy shirks & pick up their camp Rumors & publish them as facts.... They are a pest and Shall not approach me, and I will treat them as spies, which in truth they are.

As a journalist, I know what it is like to incur the self-righteous wrath of people who denounce you for things you didn't say or didn't mean.

We need journalists to be fearless and hold power to account.

If I had my choice I would kill every reporter in the world, but I am sure we would be getting reports from Hell before breakfast.

I can only assume that your editorial writer tripped over the First Amendment and thought it was the office cat.

We believe that the remedy to any harm resulting from press freedom lies in press freedom itself.

I always thought it would be a terrible mistake, and I would hope that none of my news journalist colleagues would ever consider it.

Every journalist who is not too stupid or too full of himself to notice what is going on knows that what he does is morally indefensible. He is a kind of confidence man, preying on people's vanity, ignorance or loneliness, gaining their trust and betraying them without remorse.

I have tried to write about this matter without any improper bias, but of course we are all cowards about newspapers who tyrannize over us all.

You hope the American people are fair. We recognize journalists have to kill somebody each week.

Turkey still has one of the highest number of imprisoned journalists in the world.

Is journalism a profession that serves the public by maintaining high standards, or is it a social construct that should be redesigned to directly serve certain social goods? Some argue that all journalism involves bias, either hidden or revealed. But it is one thing to say that objectivity and fairness are ultimately unreachable. It is another to cease grasping for them. That would be a world of purely private truths, in which the boldest liars and demagogues would thrive.

I accept the media for what they are. Most of them are really good people. Some of them are scumbags.

The level of journalism in this country is just so pathetically poor, and I've, in a sense, gone over the top of them, which they don't like.

Everyone, regardless of the mode of expression, has a constitutionally protected right to free speech. But when it comes to freedom of the press, I believe we must define a journalist and the constitutional and statutory protections those journalists should receive.

Being beyond politics, I am able to examine the role of the media without worrying about the indignant harrumphing that emanates from many journalists and commentators when you do so.

I normally have a healthy fear of journalists.

There are all sorts of despicable people who journalists have done interviews with, and it's been useful. Isn't more information better than less information?

When Trump attacks the news media, he's kicking a wounded animal.

Sean Hannity is a hypocrite!He's blasting anonymous sources and saying journalism is dead when he uses an anonymous source in the form of President Trump.