"Francis Claud Cockburn" of Brook Lodge, Youghal, County Cork, Munster, Ireland was an Anglo-Scottish people/Scots journalist. He was a Communist agitator in the 1930s and 40s and, though he left the party in 1947, maintained that this was more froim boredom than from revulsion at Stalin's cruelties. 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.

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Never underestimate the effectiveness of a straight cash bribe.

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.

Never believe anything until it has been officially denied.

What arouses the indignation of the honest satirist is not, unless the man is a prig, the fact that people in positions of power or influence behave idiotically, or even that they behave wickedly. It is that they conspire successfully to impose upon the public a picture of themselves as so very sagacious, honest and well-intentioned.

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.