Edward R. Murrow
Except for those who think in terms of pious platitudes or dogma or narrow prejudice (and those thoughts we aren't interested in), people don't speak their beliefs easily, or publicly.Collection: Thinking
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.Collection: Boys
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.Collection: Art
All babies look like Winston Churchill.Collection: Baby
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.Collection: Country
Language is one of the greatest gifts man has devised for himself. It ranks, alongside the discovery of fire and the wheel, as a major influence in making modern man what he is today.Collection: Men
A blur of blinks, taps, jiggles, pivots and shifts ... the body language of a man wishing urgently to be elsewhere.Collection: Men
I am entirely persuaded that the American public is more reasonable, restrained and more mature than most of our industry's program planners believe.Collection: Believe
A thing of orchestrated hell-a terrible symphony of light and flame.Collection: Light
Don't be deluded into believing that the titular heads of the networks control what appears on their networks. They all have better taste.Collection: Believe
One of the basic troubles with radio and television news is that both instruments have grown up as an incompatible combination of show business, advertising and news. Each of the three is a rather bizarre and demanding profession. And when you get all three under one roof, the dust never settles.Collection: Dust
We will not be driven by fear into an age of unreason.Collection: Fear
I have no feud, either with my employers, any sponsors, or with the professional critics of radio and television. But I am seized with an abiding fear regarding what these two instruments are doing to our society, our culture and our heritage.Collection: Two
If none of us ever read a book that was "dangerous," had a friend who was "different," or joined an organization that advocated "change," we would all be the kind of people Joe McCarthy wants.Collection: Book
Our history will be what we make of it. If we go on as we are, then history will take its revenge and retribution will not limp in catching up with us. So, just once in a while let us exhault the importance of ideas and information.Collection: Revenge
The only thing that counts is the right to know, to speak, to think - that, and the sanctity of the courts. Otherwise it's not America.Collection: Thinking
I have always been on the side of the heretics, against those who burned them, because the heretics so often turned out to be right....Dead, but right.Collection: Anger
There is a mental fear, which provokes others of us to see the images of witches in a neighbor's yard and stampedes us to burn down this house. And there is a creeping fear of doubt, doubt of what we have been taught, of the validity of so many things we had long since taken for granted to be durable and unchanging. It has become more difficult than ever to distinguish black from white, good from evil, right from wrong.Collection: Fear
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.Collection: Radio News
I am seized with an abiding fear regarding what these two instruments are doing to our society, our culture and our heritage. Our history will be what we make it. And if there are any historians about fifty or a hundred years from now, and there should be preserved the kinescopes for one week of all three networks, they will there find recorded in black and white, or color, evidence of decadence, escapism and insulation from the realities of the world in which we live.Collection: Black And White
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.Collection: Real
All I can hope to teach my son is to tell the truth and fear no man.Collection: Son
I would like television to produce some itching pills rather than this endless outpouring of tranquilizers.Collection: Pills
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.Collection: Writing
The Wright brothers' first flight was not reported in a single newspaper because every rookie reporter knew what could and couldn't be done.Collection: Brother
Just once in a while, let us exalt the importance of ideas and information.Collection: Ideas
The real crucial link in the international exchange is the last three feet, which is bridged by personal contact, one person talking to another.Collection: Real
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.Collection: Butterfly
I am frightened by the imbalance, the constant striving to reach the largest possible audience for everything; by the absence of a sustained study of the state of the nation.Collection: Imbalance
Most of them [American politicians] are men of undoubted charm, ability, and incredible energy, and yet too often they lack purpose or appetite for anything beyond their own careers. With few notable exceptions, they are simply men who want to be loved.Collection: Men
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: Country