Edward R. Murrow
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.Collection: Communication
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.Collection: Respect
Good night, and good luck.Collection: Good
Difficulty is the excuse history never accepts.Collection: History
We cannot make good news out of bad practice.Collection: Good
We cannot defend freedom abroad by deserting it at home.Collection: Freedom
The newest computer can merely compound, at speed, the oldest problem in the relations between human beings, and in the end the communicator will be confronted with the old problem, of what to say and how to say it.Collection: Technology
A satellite has no conscience.Collection: Technology
Anyone who isn't confused really doesn't understand the situation.
To be persuasive we must be believable; to be believable we must be credible; credible we must be truthful.
The obscure we see eventually. The completely obvious, it seems, takes longer.
No one can terrorize a whole nation, unless we are all his accomplices.
Everyone is a prisoner of his own experiences. No one can eliminate prejudices - just recognize them.
Just because your voice reaches halfway around the world doesn't mean you are wiser than when it reached only to the end of the bar.
Our major obligation is not to mistake slogans for solutions.
We must not confuse dissent with disloyalty. When the loyal opposition dies, I think the soul of America dies with it.
Senator McCarthy's reckless and unfounded attempt to impugn my loyalty is just one more example of his typical tactic of attempting to tie up to Communism anyone who disagrees with him.
I have an old-fashioned belief that Americans like to make up their own minds on the basis of all available information.
People say conversation is a lost art; how often I have wished it were.
Just once in a while let us exalt the importance of ideas and information.
Most truths are so naked that people feel sorry for them and cover them up, at least a little bit.
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.
If we were to do the Second Coming of Christ in color for a full hour, there would be a considerable number of stations which would decline to carry it on the grounds that a Western or a quiz show would be more profitable.
Fame is morally neutral.
If you believe that this war will be decided on the home front, then you must believe that radio used as an instrument of war is one of the most powerful weapons a nation possesses.
A nation of sheep will beget a government of wolves.Collection: Sheep
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.Collection: Complaining
We will not be driven by fear into an age of unreason, if we dig deep in our history and our doctrine, and remember that we are not descended from fearful men ... We proclaim ourselves, as indeed we are, the defenders of freedom, wherever it continues to exist in the world, but we cannot defend freedom abroad by deserting it at home.Collection: Home
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.Collection: Truth
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.Collection: Hysteria
We must not confuse dissent with disloyalty. We must remember always that accusation is not proof and that conviction depends upon evidence and due process of law. We will not walk in fear, one of another.Collection: Law
I simply cannot accept that there are on every story two equal and logical sides to an argument.Collection: Views
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.Collection: Mean Girls
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.Collection: Good Luck
To be credible we must be truthful.Collection: Truthful
We must not confuse dissent with disloyalty. We must remember always that accusation is not proof and that conviction depends upon evidence and due process of law. We will not walk in fear, one of another. We will not be driven by fear into an age of unreason, if we dig deep in our history and our doctrine, and remember that we are 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.Collection: Fear
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.Collection: Education
Learn your language well and command it well, and you will have the first component to life.Collection: Life
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.Collection: Inspirational
The obscure we always see sooner or later; the obvious always seems to take a little longer.Collection: Littles
In order to progress, radio need only go backward, to the time when singing commercials were not allowed on news reports, when there was no middle commercial on a news report, when radio was rather proud, alert and fast.Collection: Order
We will not be driven by fear ... if we remember that we are not descended from fearful men.Collection: Men
We must not confuse dissent with disloyalty.Collection: Political
Language is the memory of man. Without it he has no past, a paltry present, and an empty future. With it he can bring his dreams to life.Collection: Life
Speaking of Sir Winston Churchill: He mobilized the English language and sent it into battle.Collection: Battle
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.Collection: War
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.Collection: Art
We are in the same tent as the clowns and the freaks - that's show business.Collection: Business
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.Collection: Differences
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.Collection: Country