Jefferson:
At a very early period in my life I determined never to put a sentence into any newspaper. I have religously adhered to the resolution through my life and have great reason to be contented with it. Were I to undertake to answer the calumnies of the newspapers it would be more than my time and twenty aids could effect. For, while I should be answering one, twenty new ones would be invented. I have thought it better to trust to the justice of my countrymen that they would judge me by what they see of my conduct on the stage where they have placed me.
a friend of mine is studying Hamilton vs. Jefferson. it turns out Hamilton loved newspapers and would write frequently under his own name, or under a variety of pseudonyms. one biographer states he assumed the personality of each as he wrote under them. I think Jefferson was at ill advantage in the face of Hamilton's tactics.
No Government ought to be without censors; and when the press is free, no one ever will. Nature has given to man no other means of sifting out the truth either in religion, law or politics. I think it as honorable to the government neither to know nor notice its sycophants or censors as it would be undignified and criminal to pamper the former and persecute the latter.
this is pretty hard to parse until one understands that an old form of the word "censor", as I understand it, meant "to criticize". so "censor" as a noun and verb should be replaced with "critic" and "criticize" for the modern translation.