20 Quotes by Claud Cockburn

There is nothing quite so terrifying as a mad sheep.

A newspaper is always a weapon in somebody's hands.

The hired journalist, I thought, ought to realize that he is partly in the entertainment business and partly in the advertising business - advertising either goods, or a cause, or a government. He just has to make up his mind whom he wants to entertain, and what he wants to advertise.

If I wrote a book about England I should call it What About Wednesday Week? which is what English people say when they are making what they believe to be an urgent appointment.

One good reason for the popularity of "reductionism" among the philosophical outposts of the Western Establishment is that it can be, and is, used as a device for trying to take the wind, so to speak, out of the sails of Marxism. . . . In essence reductionism is a kind of anti-Marxist caricature of Marxist determinism. It is what anti-Marxists pretend that Marxist determinism is.

A newspaper is always a weapon in somebody’s hands.

The hired journalist, I thought, ought to realize that he is partly in the entertainment business and partly in the advertising business – advertising either goods, or a cause, or a government. He just has to make up his mind whom he wants to entertain, and what he wants to advertise.

Never believe anything until it is officially denied.

Nothing sets a person up more than having something turn out just the way it’s supposed to be, like falling into a Swiss snowdrift and seeing a big dog come up with a little cask of brandy round its neck.