Edward R. Murrow quotes - page 2

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. (Edward R. Murrow)
The real crucial link in the international exchange is the last three feet, which is bridged by personal contact, one person talking to another. View quote
Edward R. Murrow
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. View quote
Edward R. Murrow
We are in the same tent as the clowns and the freaks - that's show business. View quote
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. View quote
Edward R. Murrow
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. View quote
Edward R. Murrow
We are to a large extent an imitative society. View quote
Edward R. Murrow
He mobilized the English language and sent it into battle. View quote
Edward R. Murrow
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. View quote
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. View quote
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. (Edward R. Murrow)
Don't be deluded into believing that the titular heads of the networks control what appears on their networks. They all have better taste. View quote
Edward R. Murrow
This program is not a place where personal opinion should be mixed up with ascertainable facts...It is not, I think, humanly possible for any reporter to be completely objective, for we are all to some degree prisoners of our education, travel, reading-the sum total of our experience. View quote
Edward R. Murrow
People say conversation is a lost art; how often I have wished it were. View quote
Edward R. Murrow
Fame is morally neutral. View quote
Edward R. Murrow
If we go on as we are, we are protecting the mind of the American public from any real contact with the menacing world that squeezes in upon us. We are engaged in a great experiment to discover whether a free public opinion can devise and direct methods of managing the affairs of the nation. We may fail. But we are handicapping ourselves needlessly. View quote
Edward R. Murrow
We are currently wealthy, fat, comfortable and complacent. 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. View quote
Edward R. Murrow
It seems to me that any action that arbitrarily limits the citizen's access to sight, sound and print, upon which opinion can be based, is, in the true sense of the phrase, un-American. View quote
Edward R. Murrow
Is it not possible that an unruly head of hair, an infectious smile, eyes that seem remarkable for the depths of their sincerity, a cultivated air of authority, may attract huge television audiences regardless of the violence that may be done to truth or objectivity? View quote
Edward R. Murrow
I have reason to know, as do many of you, that when the evidence on a controversial subject is fairly and calmly presented, the public recognizes it for what it is--an effort to illuminate rather than to agitate. View quote
Edward R. Murrow
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. The top management of the networks with a few notable exceptions, has been trained in advertising, research, sales or show business. But by the nature of the corporate structure, they also make the final and crucial decisions having to do with news and public affairs. Frequently they have neither the time nor the competence to do this. (Edward R. Murrow)
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 perhaps color, evidence of decadence, escapism and insulation from the realities of the world in which we live. View quote
Edward R. Murrow
After last night's debate, the reputation of Messieurs Lincoln and Douglas is secure. View quote
Edward R. Murrow
As I walked down to the end of the barracks, there was applause from the men too weak to get out of bed. It sounded like the hand clapping of babies; they were so weak. View quote
Edward R. Murrow
...if what I say is responsible, I alone am responsible for the saying of it... View quote
Edward R. Murrow