Linda Ellerbee Quotes

I was raised by and have raised people who regard telling one story when two would do as a sign someone is not really trying.

We plant a tree that won't be big enough to climb until we're too old to climb trees, we write constitutions to protect the rights of people who won't be born for another hundred years and may not be worth the trouble anyway, and we try to take care of our sick, though we all suffer from a disease for which there is no cure and no hope for one. We will not last and we know we will not - and still we write, carve, build, paint and plant to last. We are, it seems to me, very, very brave.

What I like most about change is that it's synonym for 'hope'. If you are taking a risk, what you are really saying is, 'I believe in tomorrow and I will be part of it.

Dreck is dreck and no amount of fancy polish is going to make it anything else.

I think laughter may be a form of courage. As humans we sometimes stand tall and look into the sun and laugh, and I think we are never more brave than when we do that.

Media literacy is not just important, it's absolutely critical. It's going to make the difference between whether kids are a tool of the mass media or whether the mass media is a tool for kids to use.

When there is good news, and it is news , we do report it, but usually news is a record of human failure. Those wanting to celebrate human accomplishment are, as someone said, advised to go to the sports section.

People are pretty much alike. It's only that our differences are more susceptible to definition than our similarities.

[My father] was generous with his affection, given to great, awkward, engulfing hugs, and I can remember so clearly the smell of his hugs, all starched shirt, tobacco, Old Spice, and Cutty Sark. Sometimes I think I've never been properly hugged since.

The best time to laugh is anytime you can.

The new national campfire - radio.

We tried to do the news without frills, without fluffy hairdos, without graphics. It does say something about our business that is not very pretty. It didn't matter how good the show was. What counted was money.

In the coldest February, as in every other month in every other year, the best thing to hold on to in this world is each other.

Nothing you think at twenty-five is so.

Some of my colleagues want to be The Anchorman on the Mount. Others see themselves as the Ace Reporter. Because of 60 Minutes, there's a whole herd of them determined to be The Grand Inquisitor and a heady number want only to be The Friendliest Anchor on the Block. At least one wants to be Jesus.

There is a gentle absurdity about Washington, D.C., and it is easy to develop affection for the place, if you can forget that the consequences of what goes on there are real, whereas what goes on there may not be.

Pitching was about fooling people, manipulating them, making them believe in something that ultimately wasn't there. Great pitching was great lying.

Just because it's a rat race doesn't mean it's okay to be a rat.

In television the product is not the program; the product is the audience and the consumer of that product is the advertiser. The advertiser does not 'buy' a news program. He buys an audience.

Change, like youth, is purely wasted on the young.

When the anchorman is wearing a colonel's uniform, it tells you something.

Always remember to set a place at the table of life for the unexpected guest.

Co-dependence ... taking someone else's temperature to see how you feel ...

Like Nietzsche, I believe that without music, life would be a mistake. Nothing but silence says it better.

Presumably a movement is more polite than a revolution, and a lot slower.

If you don't want to get old, don't mellow.

Only dead fish swim with the stream all of the time ...

How is it that so often ... I get the feeling I've worked hard to learn something I already know, or knew, once.

Some of the qualities that go into making a good reporter - aggressiveness, a certain sneakiness, a secretive nature, nosiness, the ability to find out that which someone wants hidden, the inability to take 'no' with any sort of grace, a taste for gossip, rudeness, a fair disdain for what people will think of you and an occasional and calculated disregard for rules - are also qualities that go into making a very antisocial human being.

It's not just the cheerleading thing I have a problem with, it's the whole jock enchilada. I'm all for a good game of basketball in teh driveway or a killer bike ride. But when there's tackling and grunting involved
no thanks.

Time doesn't go. Time stays. We go.

I want to know why, if men rule the world, they don't stop wearing neckties.

Styles, like everything else, change. Style doesn't.