Walter Cronkite Quotes

The profession of journalism ought to be about telling people what they need to know - not what they want to know.

If that is what makes us liberals, so be it, just as long as in reporting the news we adhere to the first ideals of good journalism - that news reports must be fair, accurate and unbiased.

Freedom of the press is not just important to democracy, it is democracy.

The ethic of the journalist is to recognize one's prejudices, biases, and avoid getting them into print.

America's health care system is neither healthy, caring, nor a system.

There is no such thing as a little freedom. Either you are all free, or you are not free.

In seeking truth you have to get both sides of a story.

Our job is only to hold up the mirror - to tell and show the public what has happened.

We are on the precipice of being so ignorant that our democracy is threatened.

Success is more permanent when you achieve it without destroying your principles.

We are not educated well enough to perform the necessary act of intelligently selecting our leaders.

I am dumbfounded that there hasn't been a crackdown with the libel and slander laws on some of these would-be writers and reporters on the Internet.

The debates are part of the unconscionable fraud that our political campaigns have become a format that defies meaningful discourse. They should be charged with sabotaging the electoral process.

Whatever the cost of our libraries, the price is cheap compared to that of an ignorant nation.

It is not the reporter's job to be a patriot or to presume to determine where patriotism lies. His job is to relate the facts.

Ethics must be reintroduced to public service to restore people's faith in government. Without such faith, democracy cannot flourish. Your ambitious agenda is filling a desperate need.

We've always known you can gain circulation or viewers by cheapening the product, and now you're finding the bad driving out the good.

I never had the ambition to be something. I had the ambition to do something.

Not only do we have a right to know, we have a duty to know what our Government is doing in our name.

And that's the way it is.

Leaving San Francisco is like saying goodbye to an old sweetheart. You want to linger as long as possible.

It is a seldom proffered argument as to the advantages of a free press that it has a major function in keeping the government itself informed as to what the government is doing.

Objective journalism and an opinion column are about as similar as the Bible and Playboy magazine.

I think it is absolutely essential in a democracy to have competition in the media, a lot of competition, and we seem to be moving away from that.

It seems now more certain than ever that the bloody experience of Vietnam is to end in a stalemate.

I asked [my doctors] if I'd be able to play singles tennis and they said I could. That made me very happy since I haven't played in five years.

Our task is not to tell the truth; we are opinion molders.

To say that we are closer to victory today is to believe, in the face of the evidence, the optimists who have been wrong in the past.

I am a news presenter, a news broadcaster, an anchorman, a managing editor - not a commentator or analyst. I feel no compulsion to be a pundit.

In all my years as a news commentator I was never once, able to tell the truth, about anything.

The ruling class is the rich. . . . And those people are so able to manipulate our democracy that they really control the democracy.

The invasion of Iraq was illegal from the start.

Interviewing friends is a tough one. Your duty to the interview must transcend your friendship. Occasionally you'll lose a friend.

When you're bringing in a fairly unknown candidate challenging a sitting president, the population needs a lot more information than reduced coverage provides.

Never before probably has the need for interfaith commitment been nearly as great as it is at this very moment.

The perils of duck hunting are great- especially for the duck.

We know that no one should tell a woman she has to bear an unwanted child. We know that religious beliefs cannot define patriotism.

Our country today is at a stage in our foreign policy similar to that crucial point in our nation's early history when our Constitution was produced in Philadelphia.

The battle for the airwaves cannot be limited to only those who have the bank accounts to pay for the battle and win it.

Justice was born outside the home and a long way from it; and it has never been adopted there

The daily coverage of the Vietnamese battlefield helped convince the American public that the carnage was not worth the candle.

The sweet smell of the South, of Camellias and Azaleas, clings to Beaufort's ancient and historic buildings.

The first priority of humankind in this era is to establish an effective system of world law that will assure peace with justice among the peoples of the world.

Be kind to an old man.

Dan Rather and I just aren't especially chummy.

We cannot defer this responsibility to posterity. Time will not wait.

Everything is being compressed into tiny tablets. You take a little pill of news every day-23 minutes-and that's supposed to be enough.

This opens the door on another chapter of history.

I think somebody ought to do a survey as to how many great, important men have quit to spend time with their families who spent any more time with their family. Probably less.

Television... is not a substitute for print.