Edward R. Murrow Quotes
The speed of communications is wondrous to behold. It is also true that speed can multiply the distribution of information that we know to be untrue.
I simply cannot accept that there are on every story two equal and logical sides to an argument.
We must not confuse dissent with disloyalty. When the loyal opposition dies, I think the soul of America dies with it.
To be persuasive we must be believable; to be believable we must be credible; credible we must be truthful.
If none of us ever read a book that was "dangerous," had a friend who was "different," or joined an organization that advocated "change," we would all be the kind of people Joe McCarthy wants.
If radio news is to be regarded as a commodity, only acceptable when saleable, then I don't care what you call it - I say it isn't news.
I have always been on the side of the heretics, against those who burned them, because the heretics so often turned out to be right....Dead, but right.
The only thing that counts is the right to know, to speak, to think - that, and the sanctity of the courts. Otherwise it's not America.
The politician in my country seeks votes, affection and respect, in that order...With few notable exceptions, they are simply men who want to be loved.
Learn your language well and command it well, and you will have the first component to life.
The Wright brothers' first flight was not reported in a single newspaper because every rookie reporter knew what could and couldn't be done.
Everyone is a prisoner of his own experiences. No one can eliminate prejudices - just recognize them.
The real crucial link in the international exchange is the last three feet, which is bridged by personal contact, one person talking to another.
The best speakers know enough to be scared…the only difference between the pros and the novices is that the pros have trained the butterflies to fly in formation.
I was greatly influenced by one of my teachers. She had a zeal not so much for perfection as for steady betterment-she demanded not excellence so much as integrity.
Seldom, if ever, has a war ended leaving the victors with such a sense of uncertainty and fear, with such a realization that the future is obscure and that survival is not assured.
I am frightened by the imbalance, the constant striving to reach the largest possible audience for everything; by the absence of a sustained study of the state of the nation.
The politician is trained in the art of inexactitude. His words tend to be blunt or rounded, because if they have a cutting edge they may later return to wound him.
Speaking of Sir Winston Churchill: He mobilized the English language and sent it into battle.
A blur of blinks, taps, jiggles, pivots and shifts ... the body language of a man wishing urgently to be elsewhere.
We're not descended from fearful men - not from men who feared to write, to speak, to associate, and to defend causes that were, for the moment, unpopular.
A reporter is always concerned with tomorrow. There's nothing tangible of yesterday. All I can say I've done is agitate the air ten or fifteen minutes and then boom - it's gone.
We will not be driven by fear ... if we remember that we are not descended from fearful men.
Language is one of the greatest gifts man has devised for himself. It ranks, alongside the discovery of fire and the wheel, as a major influence in making modern man what he is today.
Of this be wary. Honor and fame are often regarded as interchangeable. Both involve an appraisal of the individual. . . but I suggest this difference. Fame is morally neutral.
Except for those who think in terms of pious platitudes or dogma or narrow prejudice (and those thoughts we aren't interested in), people don't speak their beliefs easily, or publicly.
Don't be deluded into believing that the titular heads of the networks control what appears on their networks. They all have better taste.
The obscure we always see sooner or later; the obvious always seems to take a little longer.
I would like television to produce some itching pills rather than this endless outpouring of tranquilizers.
