Respectfully Quoted: A Dictionary of Quotations. 1989.
NUMBER:
171
AUTHOR:
Woodrow Wilson (1856–1924)
QUOTATION:
I can imagine no greater disservice to the country than to establish a system of censorship that would deny to the people of a free republic like our own their indisputable right to criticise their own public officials. While exercising the great powers of the office I hold, I would regret in a crisis like the one through which we are now passing to lose the benefit of patriotic and intelligent criticism.
ATTRIBUTION:
President WOODROW WILSON, letter to Arthur Brisbane, April 25, 1917.—Ray Stannard Baker, Woodrow Wilson, Life and Letters, vol. 6, p. 36 (1946).
