Stephen Colbert on journalism

Winning the Nobel Prize does not automatically qualify you to be commander in chief. I think George Bush has proved definitively that to be president, you don’t need to care about science, literature or peace.

Give a man a fish and he’ll eat for a day. Give a man a sub-prime fish loan and you’re in business, buddy.

We claim no respectability. There’s no status I would not surrender for a joke. So we don’t have to defend anything.

The man who reads nothing at all is better educated than the man who reads nothing but newspapers.

Thomas Jefferson1743–1826

• Reading

I figured out why I’m not getting seriously rich. I write newspaper columns. Nobody ever makes newspaper columns into Major Motion Pictures starring Tom Cruise. The best you can hope for, with a newspaper column, is that people will like it enough to attach it to their refrigerators with magnets shaped like fruit.

Dave Barryborn 1947

• Dave Barry

You should never pick up a newspaper when you’re feeling good, because every newspaper has a special department, called the Bummer Desk, which is responsible for digging up depressing front-page stories with headlines like DOORBELL USE LINKED TO LEUKEMIA and OZONE LAYER COMPLETELY GONE DIRECTLY OVER YOUR HOUSE.

Dave Barryborn 1947

• Dave Barry