Daily Inspiration Quote by Arthur Ochs Sulzberger

Sulzberger is tiptoeing into a confession, and the tiptoe is the point. He starts with a kind of throat-clearing apology: “In dread fear of sentimentality.” That phrase is newsroom culture distilled - the professional reflex to treat emotion as a credibility risk, to keep the human heart out of copy that’s supposed to read like fact. By naming the dread, he signals he knows the rules and is about to break them anyway.

The sentence then performs its own reluctant honesty. “Another thing true is not said” frames affection not as a marketing line but as an omitted fact, a truth suppressed by taste, machismo, or institutional decorum. Sulzberger isn’t simply praising “the paper”; he’s defending the legitimacy of attachment inside an organization that often survives by projecting detachment. The staff’s “pride” is the acceptable emotion - civic, earned, professional. “Affection” is riskier, softer, closer to the messy reasons people stay late, fight edits, absorb public anger, and still identify with the masthead.

The dash-and-hesitation structure (“and-yes, love”) matters. It mimics someone catching himself mid-sentence, then choosing candor over cool. Coming from a publisher - a figure associated with budgets, governance, and distance - the admission doubles as a subtle claim about stewardship: the institution isn’t only a business asset or a democratic utility; it’s a community people can love without apology.

The subtext is also defensive. In an era when the press is accused of arrogance or cynicism, Sulzberger offers a counterimage: not saints, not machines, but workers bound to the craft by emotion they’re trained to hide.