"James Barrett Reston", nicknamed "Scotty", was an American journalist whose career spanned the mid-1930s to the early 1990s. He was associated for many years with The New York Times.

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Americans have always been able to handle austerity and even adversity. Prosperity is what is doing us in.

Europe has a press that stresses opinions; America a press, radio, and television that emphasize news.

Stick with the optimists. It's going to be tough enough even if they're right.

This is the devilish thing about foreign affairs: they are foreign and will not always conform to our whim.

A government is the only known vessel that leaks from the top.

The rising power of the United States in world affairs requires, not a more compliant press, but a relentless barrage of facts and criticism. Our job in this age, as I see it, is not to serve as cheerleaders for our side in the present world struggle but to help the largest possible number of people to see the realities of the changing and convulsive world in which American policy must operate.

If it's far away, it's news, but if it's close at home, it's sociology.

Wealth is conspicuous, but poverty hides.

The conflict between the men who make and the men who report the news is as old as time. News may be true, but it is not truth, and reporters and officials seldom see it the same way. In the old days, the reporters or couriers of bad news were often put to the gallows; now they are given the Pulitzer Prize, but the conflict goes on.