Edward R Murrow Quotes

American traditions and the American ethic require us to be truthful, but the most important reason is that truth is the best propaganda and lies are the worst. To be persuasive we must be believable; to be believable we must be credible; to be credible we must be truthful. It is as simple as that. ~ Edward R. Murrow

Difficulty is the excuse history never accepts. ~ Edward R. Murrow

We hardly need to be reminded that we are living in an age of confusion - a lot of us have traded in our beliefs for bitterness and cynicism or for a heavy package of despair, or even a quivering portion of hysteria. Opinions can be picked up cheap in the market place while such commodities as courage and fortitude and faith are in alarmingly short supply. ~ Edward R. Murrow

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. ~ Edward R. Murrow

I am entirely persuaded that the American public is more reasonable, restrained and mature than most of the broadcast industry's planners believe. Their fear of controversy is not warranted by the evidence. ~ Edward R. Murrow

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. ~ Edward R. Murrow

The Founding Fathers are always spinning in their graves over something, as is Ronald Reagan, or FDR. Edward R. Murrow is a perennial grave spinner in the news business (though in fact, Murrow was cremated). ~ Mark Leibovich

The script for this film was written 52 years ago by Edward R. Murrow, who taught us many valuable lessons about responsibility and always, always questioned authority, because without it authority often goes unchecked. ~ George Clooney

I simply cannot accept that there are, on every story, two equal and logical sides to an argument. ~ Edward R. Murrow

All I can hope to teach my son is to tell the truth and fear no man. ~ Edward R. Murrow

We have currently a built-in allergy to unpleasant or disturbing information. Our mass media reflect this. But unless we get up off our fat surpluses and recognize that television in the main is being used to distract, delude, amuse, and insulate us, then television and those who finance it, those who look at it, and those who work at it, may see a totally different picture too late. ~ Edward R. Murrow

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. ~ Edward R. Murrow

It is well to remember that freedom through the press is the thing that comes first. Most of us probably feel we couldn't be free without newspapers, and that is the real reason we want the newspapers to be free. ~ Edward R. Murrow

With "Good Night, and Good Luck," I think it's kind of obvious what [Truman Capote]'s getting at there, and the importance of how it's playing out today, that is journalism doing, are the journalists doing their job, are they being the other checks and balances in our country that the way that obviously Edward R. Murrow was back then. ~ Philip Seymour Hoffman

We are in the same tent as the clowns and the freaks-that's show business. ~ Edward R. Murrow

The obscure we always see sooner or later; the obvious always seems to take a little longer. ~ Edward R. Murrow

We are to a large extent an imitative society. ~ Edward R. Murrow

In Europe, Murrow observed to his wife, people were dying and "a thousand years of civilization [were] being smashed" while America remained on the sidelines. How could one possibly be objective or neutral about that? ~ Lynne Olson

A nation of sheep will beget a government of wolves. ~ Edward R. Murrow

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. ~ Edward R. Murrow

A satellite has no conscience. ~ Edward R. Murrow

It appeared that most of the men and boys had died of starvation; they had not been executed. But the manner of death seemed unimportant. Murder had been done at Buchenwald. God alone knows how many men and boys have died there during the last twelve years. ~ Edward R. Murrow

We cannot make good news out of bad practice. ~ Edward R. Murrow

If anyone was talking about journalism in the '50s - it was Edward R.Murrow. ~ David Strathairn

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. ~ Edward R. Murrow

People say conversation is a lost art; how often I have wished it were. ~ Edward R. Murrow

It has always seemed to me the real art in this business is not so much moving information or guidance or policy five or 10,000 miles. That is an electronic problem. The real art is to move it the last three feet in face to face conversation. ~ Edward R. Murrow

The right of dissent, or, if you prefer, the right to be wrong, is surely fundamental to the existence of a democratic society. That's the right that went first in every nation that stumbled down the trail toward totalitarianism. ~ Edward R. Murrow

We will not be driven by fear into an age of unreason. ~ Edward R. Murrow

We cannot defend freedom abroad by deserting it at home. ~ Edward R. Murrow

This instrument [radio] can teach. It can illuminate, yes, and it can even inspire. But it can do so only to the extent that humans are determined to use it to those ends. Otherwise it's nothing but wires and lights in a box. ~ Edward R. Murrow

All babies look like Winston Churchill. ~ Edward R. Murrow

When the politicians complain that TV turns the proceedings into a circus, it should be made clear that the circus was already there, and that TV has merely demonstrated that not all the performers are well trained. ~ Edward R. Murrow

Most truth's are so naked that people feel sorry for them and cover them up, at least a little bit. ~ Edward R. Murrow

Just once in a while let us exalt the importance of ideas and information. ~ Edward R. Murrow

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. ~ Edward R. Murrow

To be persuasive, We must be believable,
To be believable, We must be credible,
To be credible, We must be truthful. ~ Edward R. Murrow

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. ~ Edward R. Murrow

I'm delighted to carry on in the tradition of the great reporters like Edward R. Murrow, Ernie Pyle, and Geraldo Rivera to probe vitally important issues of the day, starting with whether I'm Hispanic or Latino. ~ Al Madrigal

We will not be driven by fear ... if we remember that we are not descended from fearful men. ~ Edward R. Murrow

When Jonas Salk, a scientist at the University of Pittsburgh, found it and developed the first polio vaccine in 1952, he did not patent the lifesaving treatment. "There is no patent," Salk told the broadcaster Edward R. Murrow: "Could you patent the sun? ~ Naomi Klein

I have said, and I believe, that potentially we have in this country a free enterprise system of radio and television which is superior to any other. But to achieve its promise, it must be both free and enterprising. There is no suggestion here that networks or individual stations should operate as philanthropies. But I can find nothing in the Bill of Rights or in the Communications Act which says that they must increase their net profits each year, lest the Republic collapse. ~ Edward R. Murrow

The obscure we see eventually. The completely obvious, it seems, takes longer. ~ Edward R. Murrow

Our major obligation is not to mistake slogans for solutions. ~ Edward R. Murrow

Everyone is a prisoner of his own experiences. No one can eliminate prejudices
just recognize them. ~ Edward R. Murrow

Fame is morally neutral. ~ Edward R. Murrow

It is not necessary to remind you of the fact that your voice, amplified to the degree where it reaches from one end of the country to the other, does not confer upon you greater wisdom than when your voice reached only from one end of the bar to the other. All of these things you know. ~ Edward R. Murrow

Anyone who isn't confused really doesn't understand the situation. ~ Edward R. Murrow

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. ~ Edward R. Murrow

No one can terrorize a whole nation, unless we are all his accomplices. ~ Edward R. Murrow

There are certain men who are sacrosanct in history; you touch on the truth of them at your peril. These are such men as Socrates and Plato, Pericles and Alexander, Caesar and Augustus, Marcus Aurelius and Trajan, Martel and Charlemagne, Edward the Confessor and William of Falaise, St. Louis and Richard and Tancred, Erasmus and Bacon, Galileo and Newton, Voltaire and Rousseau, Harvey and Darwin, Nelson and Wellington. In America, Penn and Franklin, Jefferson and Jackson and Lee. There are men better than these who are not sacrosanct, who may be challenged freely. But these men may not be. Albert Pike has been elevated to this sacrosanct company, though of course to a minor rank. To challenge his rank is to be overwhelmed by a torrent of abuse, and we challenge him completely.

Looks are important to these elevated. Albert Pike looked like Michelangelo's Moses in contrived frontier costume. Who could distrust that big man with the great beard and flowing hair and godly glance?
If you dislike the man and the type, then he was pompous, empty, provincial and temporal, dishonest, and murderous. But if you like the man and the type, then he was impressive, untrammeled, a man of the right place and moment, flexible or sophisticated, and firm.
These are the two sides of the same handful of coins.
He stole (diverted) Indian funds and used them to bribe doubtful Indian leaders. He ordered massacres of women and children (exemplary punitive operations). He lied ~ R.A. Lafferty

We have a festering mass of human wretchedness in all our great towns, which is the natural hotbed of such anarchical movements: all the great continental countries are full of this explosive material. Can we depend on our country keeping free from the infection when we have far more poverty in our midst than the neighbouring European States? ~ Edward R.B. Pease

He's too fresh," said Mrs. Wiggins. "I can't abide a fresh duck." "You said the other day you couldn't abide a bashful duck," Jinx said. "Make up your mind, cow." "I can't stand either of 'em," Mrs. Wiggins said. "This Edward seems to be two ducks, and I don't like either of them. ~ Walter R. Brooks

It is not how much empty space there is, but rather how it is used. It is not how much information there is, but rather how effectively it is arranged. ~ Edward R. Tufte

What about confusing clutter? Information overload? Doesn't data have to be "boiled down" and "simplified"? These common questions miss the point, for the quantity of detail is an issue completely separate from the difficulty of reading. Clutter and confusion are failures of design, not attributes of information. ~ Edward R. Tufte

Above all else show the data. ~ Edward R. Tufte

The world is big but it is comprehensible, says R. Buckminster Fuller. But it seems to me that the world is not nearly big enough and that any portion of its surface, left unpaved and alive, is infinitely rich in details and relationships, in wonder, beauty, mystery comprehensible only in part. The very existence of existence is itself suggestive of the unknown - not a problem, but a mystery. We will never get to the bottom of it, never know the whole of even so small and trivial and useless and precious a place as Aravaipa. Therein lies our redemption. ~ Edward Abbey

Graphical excellence is that which gives to the viewer the greatest number of ideas in the shortest time with the least ink in the smallest space. ~ Edward R. Tufte

Building on the work of George Macdonald, William Morris and Edward Plunkett, what became known as high fantasy was more or less invented by J. R. R. Tolkien. ~ Adrian McKinty

The awful wrongs and sufferings forced upon the innocent, helpless, faithful animal race form the blackest chapter in the whole world's history. ~ R. Edward Freeman

A situation where a solution to a stakeholder problem is imposed by a government agency or the courts must be seen as a managerial failure. ~ R. Edward Freeman

If the statistics are boring, then you've got the wrong numbers. ~ Edward R. Tufte

No one was a stranger in that crowd. We had all heard FDR's "Fireside Chats" and Edward R. Murrow's "This is London," listened to H.V. Kaltenborn for the evening news, and watched the newsreels before the movies. We'd read Ernie Pyle's columns, planted victory gardens, written V mails, sent care packages, gathered phonograph records for the USO, given up nylon for parachutes, saved bacon grease for explosives, and turned in tin foil, saved from gum wrappers, for ammunition. Most of all, we'd prayed that our loved ones would be safe. ~ Marjorie Hart

I have stared long enough at the glowing flat rectangles of computer screens. Let us give more time for doing things in the real world ... plant a plant, walk the dogs, read a real book, go to the opera. ~ Edward R. Tufte

Design cannot rescue failed content. ~ Edward R. Tufte

Truth be told, you gotta dance barefoot if you really want to feel the earth move. ~ Edward R. Hackemer

When people ask me what is an editorial cartoonist, I often say we're kind of a hybrid. We're a cross between Edward R. Morrow, Ted Koppel and the Son of Sam. ~ Michael Ramirez

Allowing artist-illustrators to control the design and content of statistical graphics is almost like allowing typographers to control the content, style, and editing of prose. ~ Edward R. Tufte

Small, noncomparative, highly labeled data sets usually belong in tables. ~ Edward R. Tufte

In the end, we will never, ever be able to guarantee that there will not be an Edward Snowden or another Chelsea Manning because this is a large enterprise composed of human beings with all their idiosyncrasies. ~ James R. Clapper

I believe that marijuana, aka cannabis should be recognized for what it is - an effective herb, grown from soil and seed, nurtured by sun and rain. ~ Edward R. Cook

Child mortality [since 2000 is] down by 2.65 million a year. That's a rate of 7,256 children's lives saved each day ... It drives me nuts that most people don't seem to know this news. ~ Edward De Bono

No, Edward. You are here so I can teach you something. All the people you meet here have one thing to teach you. ~ Mitch Albom

There's not much value to us attacking Chinese systems. We might take a few computers offline. We might take a factory offline. We might steal secrets from a university research programs, and even something high-tech. But how much more does the United States spend on research and development than China does? ~ Edward Snowden

They have written volumes out of which a couplet of verse, a period in prose, may cling to the rock of ages, as a shell that survives a deluge. ~ Edward Bulwer-Lytton, 1st Baron Lytton

No people require maxims so much as the American. The reason is obvious: the country is so vast, the people always going somewhere, from Oregon apple valley to boreal New England, that we do not know whether to be temperate orchards or sterile climate. ~ Edward Dahlberg

Sometimes I wish I could feel more pain
so I could touch that much more beauty. ~ Edward Fahey

How to Avoid Pleurisy: Never make love to a girl named Candy on the tailgate of a half-ton Ford pickup during a chill rain in April out on Grandview Point in San Juan County, Utah. ~ Edward Abbey

To frown at pleasure, and to smile in pain. ~ Edward Young

I am just going outside and may be some time. Reportedly the last words of Lawrence Oates according to Captain Robert Falcon Scott, who commanded the ill-fated expedition to the South Pole 1911/12. ~ Captain Lawrence Edward Grace Oates

Everybody likes to get as much power as circumstances allow, and nobody will vote for a self-denying ordinance. ~ John Emerich Edward Dalberg-Acton

No man likes to be smoked out of his hole in February. ~ Edward Abbey

I was brought in by the White House as GM's chairman in 2009, around the time of the bankruptcy, and became CEO later that year. As a company, we were grateful for the government's support. But as GM's financial health began to improve, I could detect no real sense of urgency, or even interest, on the part of the government to relinquish control. ~ Edward Whitacre, Jr.

I always believed there would be an African-American president. It was something I'd dreamed about, thought about, but certainly did not believe would happen in my lifetime. ~ Edward Brooke

No, he mustn't think about it, or indeed about anything, and especially not about heroin, because heroin was the one thing that really worked, the only thing that stopped him scampering around in a hamster's wheel of unanswerable questions. Heroin was the cavalry. Heroin was the missing chair leg, made with such precision that it matched every splinter of the break. Heroin landed purring at the base of his skull, and wrapped itself darkly around his nervous system, like a black cat curling up on its favourite cushion. It was as soft and rich as the throat of a wood pigeon, or the splash of sealing wax onto a page, or a handful of gems slipping from palm to palm. ~ Edward St. Aubyn

I have no interest in sailing around the world. Not that there is any lack of requests for me to do so. ~ Edward Heath

I think Christians fail so often to get answers to their prayers because they do not wait long enough on God. They just drop down and say a few words, and then jump up and forget it and expect God to answer them. Such praying always reminds me of the small boy ringing his neighbor's door-bell, and then running away as fast as he can go. ~ Edward McKendree Bounds

A diplomat is a man who thinks twice before he says nothing. ~ Edward Heath