Journalism quote of the day

Published July 28, 2020
Updated September 10, 2020

We’re collecting our favorite quotes about craft, journalism, press freedom and the news. If you have a quote or piece of advice that you often turn to for inspiration, share it here.

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"If you ever find yourself in the wrong story, leave," Mo Willems

“The way to right wrongs is to turn the light of truth upon them,” Ida B. Wells

“The most profound lessons
about journalism I've learned have been taught to me by the
people I've covered,” Jodi Kantor

"“If you can tell a story well,
you can move people
to do something," Soledad O'brien

“The camera is an excuse to be someplace you otherwise don’t belong. It gives me both a point of connection and a point of separation,” Susan Meiselas

“Many stories matter. Stories have been used to dispossess and to malign. But stories can also be used to empower, and to humanize. Stories can break the dignity of a people. But stories can also repair that broken dignity,” Chimamanda Ngozi Adichie

"Learn everything you can, anytime you can, from anyone you can," Sarah Caldwell

“My brave and bold journalists, rise and work with integrity, for now more than ever, the world faces an imminent information-catastrophe, and you are our first line of defense,” Abhijit Naskar, The Constitution of The United Peoples of Earth

“Write what should not be forgotten,” Isabel Allende

“The future of journalism is in all of us,” Heather Marsh

“Talent is insignificant. I know a lot of talented ruins. Beyond talent lie all the usual words: discipline, love, luck, but, most of all, endurance.” James Baldwin (Paris Review Interviews, II)

"As a writer, a failure is just information." Toni Morrison

“It's great being a journalist, because our office is the world,” Rebecca Aguilar

“Words arranged in the right order produce an afterglow.” —Valeria Luiselli

“Nobody’s as powerful as we make them out to be.” Alice Walker

“To write something you have to risk making a fool of yourself.” Anne Rice

“But editors are still the world's readers. And thus the eyes of the world.” Betsy Lerner

"Every word a woman writes changes the story of the world, revises the official version." Carolyn See

"You can solve most of your writing problems if you stop after every sentence and ask: What does the reader need to know next?" William Zinsser

"A story carves deep grooves into our brains each time we tell it. But we aren’t one story. We can change our stories. We can write our own." Amy Poehler, "Yes Please"

“There are good days and bad days for me — even now. Don't let the hard days win.” Sarah J. Maas, "A Court of Mist and Fury"

"The Six Golden Rules of Writing: Read, read, read, and write, write, write." Ernest Gaines, Author

“There is no greater agony than bearing an untold story inside you.” Maya Angelou

“If I waited for perfection, I would never write a word.” — Margaret Atwood

“We write to taste life twice, in the moment and in retrospect.” Anaïs Nin

"You can hide memories, but you can't erase the history that produced them." Haruki Murakami

"I think everybody’s writing even if they’re not putting anything on the page" — Lori Gottlieb