Murrow Quotes

LATER. - I must go to Germany. At midnight Murrow phoned from London with the news. The British and French have decided they will not fight for Czechoslovakia and are asking Prague to surrender unconditionally to Hitler and turn over Sudetenland to Germany. I protested to Ed that the Czechs wouldn't accept it, that they'd fight alone ... . Maybe so. I hope you're right. But in the meantime Mr. Chamberlain is meeting Hitler at Godesberg on Wednesday and we want you to cover that. If there's a war, then you can go back to Prague. ~ William L. Shirer

News, after all, is a spin of words and pictures. It's a kind of music. There are beats in a newscast, a newspaper story. Ed Murrow sounded like Ed Murrow. Huntley and Brinkley sounded different. Anderson Cooper, different still. ~ Robert Krulwich

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 don't think I could've carried the weight that Murrow carried. ~ David Strathairn

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

Murrow covered something because it needed coverage. He wasn't trying to get an audience just for the sake of it. ~ Daniel Schorr

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

[Ed Murrow] admitted he was having trouble coming to grips with the idea of peace: "Trying to realize what has happened, one's mind takes refuge in the past. The war that was seems more real than the peace that has come. ~ Lynne Olson

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

Men tend to be more orthodox in belief. Their concern for the rules keeps a congregation from drifting toward mushy moral relativism. ~ David 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