I. F. Stone Quotes

14 Sourced Quotes

The difference between burlesque and the newspapers is that the former never pretended to be performing a public service by exposure.

I. F. Stone
If God, as some now say, is dead, He no doubt died of trying to find an equitable solution to the Arab-Jewish problem.

I. F. Stone
Every emancipation has in it the seeds of a new slavery, and every truth easily becomes a lie.

I. F. Stone
I sought in political reporting what Galsworthy in another context had called "the significant trifle" — the bit of dialogue, the overlooked fact, the buried observation which illuminated the realities of the situation.

I. F. Stone
The fault I find with most American newspapers is not the absence of dissent. it is the absence of news. With a dozen or so honorable exceptions, most American newspapers carry very little news. Their main concern is advertising.

I. F. Stone
All governments lie, but disaster lies in wait for countries whose officials smoke the same hashish they give out.

I. F. Stone
The arms race is based on an optimistic view of technology and a pessimistic view of man. It assumes there is no limit to the ingenuity of science and no limit to the deviltry of human beings.

I. F. Stone
I thought I might teach philosophy but the atmosphere of a college faculty repelled me; the few islands of greatness seemed to be washed by seas of pettiness and mediocrity.

I. F. Stone
Every man is his own Pygmalion, and spends his life fashioning himself. And in fashioning himself, for good or ill, he fashions the human race and its future.

I. F. Stone
A certain moral imbecility marks all ethnocentric movements.

I. F. Stone
There must be renewed recognition that societies are kept stable and healthy by reform, not by thought police; this means there must be free play for so-called subversive ideas - every idea subverts the old to make way for the new. To shut off subversion is to shut off peaceful progress and to invite revolution and war.

I. F. Stone
You never know on what page you will find a page-one story.
Of the Washington Post

I. F. Stone
Every time we are confronted with a new revolution we take to the opium pipes of our own propaganda.

I. F. Stone
Lifelong dissent has more than acclimated me cheerfully to defeat. It has made me suspicious of victory. I feel uneasy at the very idea of a Movement. I see every insight degenerating into a dogma, and fresh thoughts freezing into lifeless party line.

I. F. Stone