Claud Cockburn
Claud Cockburn
Francis Claud Cockburn of Brook Lodge, Youghal, County Cork, Munster, Irelandwas an Anglo-Scots journalist. His saying "believe nothing until it has been officially denied" is widely quoted in journalistic studies, although he doesn't claim credit for originating it. He was the second cousin, once removed, of novelists Alec Waugh and Evelyn Waugh...
NationalityBritish
ProfessionJournalist
Date of Birth12 April 1904
Claud Cockburn quotes about
truth believe has-beens
Believe nothing until it has been officially denied.
effectiveness cash underestimate
Never underestimate the effectiveness of a straight cash bribe.
philosophical speaks-out wind
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.
government mind advertising-business
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.
hands weapons newspapers
A newspaper is always a weapon in somebody's hands.
sheep mad
There is nothing quite so terrifying as a mad sheep.
country couple divorce
Evidently there are plenty of people in journalism who have neither got what they liked nor quite grown to like what they get. They write pieces they do not much enjoy writing, for papers they totally despise, and the sad process ends by ruining their style and disintegrating their personality, two developments which in a writer cannot be separate, since his personality and style must progress or deteriorate together, like a married couple in a country where death is the only permissible divorce.
success dog fall
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.
duplicity hair wigs
A wartime Minister of Information is compelled, in the national interest, to such continuous acts of duplicity that even his natural hair must grow to resemble a wig.
funny humor earthquakes
Small earthquake in Chile. Not many dead.