William Randolph Hearst Quotes

“You must keep your mind on the objective, not on the obstacle.”

“You furnish the pictures and I'll furnish the war.”

“A politician will do anything to keep his job – even become a patriot.”

“We must be alarmingly enterprising, and we must be startlingly original, and do new and striking things which constitute a revolution.”

“News is what people don't want you to print. Everything else is ads.”

“Truth is not only stranger than fiction, it is more interesting.”

“Any man who has the brains to think and the nerve to act for the benefit of the people of the country is considered a radical by those who are content with stagnation and willing to endure disaster.”

“All work and no play may make Jim a dull boy, but no work and all play makes Jim all kinds of a jackass.”

“I have no use for all-out liberals because I don't think they have an original thought.”

“Run a newspaper that is independent of everything except the interests of the public that you serve.”

“It is not only fashionable to be sympathetic to Communism, but profitable too.”

“Don't be afraid to make a mistake, your readers might like it.”

“He is so far ahead of his staffs that they can hardly see him.”

“The combination in a single man of great genius, great wealth, and total freedom from the particular sort of cowardice which wealth usually generates is of such rare occurrence that it is perhaps asking too much of his contemporaries that they should understand him.”

“Whatever is right can be achieved through the irresistible power of awakened and informed public opinion. Our object, therefore, is not to inquire whether a thing can be done, but whether it ought to be done, and if it ought to be done, to so exert the forces of publicity that public opinion will compel it to be done.”

“Hearst was the most interesting to meet. I got to like him — a grave, simple child with no doubt a nasty temper, playing with the most costly toys, a vast income always overspent, ceaseless building and collecting, two magnificent establishments, two charming wives, complete indifference to public opinion, a 15 million daily circulation, extreme personal courtesy, and the appearance of a Quaker elder.”

“Now if you should make over to me the Examiner — with enough money to carry out my schemes — I'll tell you what I would do. It would be well to make the paper as far as possible original, to imitate only some such leading journal as the New York World which is undoubtedly the best paper of that class which appeals to the people and which depends for its success upon enterprise, energy and a certain startling originality.”

“I don't think that my papers are so bad.”

“Money is simply power in cold storage.”

“William Randolph Hearst was a huge man with a tiny voice; a shy man who was most comfortable in crowds; a war hawk in Cuba and Mexico but a pacifist in Europe; an autocratic boss who could not fire people; a devoted husband who lived with his mistress; a Californian who spent half his life in the East.”