Edward R. Murrow (1908 – 1965)
American journalist; born Egbert Roscoe Murrow.
We cannot make good news out of bad practice.
Last week may be remembered as the week that broadcasting recaptured its soul.
Perhaps we should warn you that there is one thing you won’t read, and that is a pat answer for the problems of life. We don’t pretend to make this a spiritual or psychological patent-medicine chest where one can come and get a pill of wisdom, to be swallowed like an aspirin, to banish the headaches of our times.
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.
Anyone who isn't confused doesn't really understand the situation.
If we confuse dissent with disloyalty — if we deny the right of the individual to be wrong, unpopular, eccentric or unorthodox — if we deny the essence of racial equality then hundreds of millions in Asia and Africa who are shopping about for a new allegiance will conclude that we are concerned to defend a myth and our present privileged status. Every act that denies or limits the freedom of the individual in this country costs us the ... confidence of men and women who aspire to that freedom and independence of which we speak and for which our ancestors fought.
After last night’s debate, the reputation of Messieurs Lincoln and Douglas is secure.
We are to a large extent an imitative society.
Everyone is a prisoner of his own experiences. No one can eliminate prejudices — just recognize them.
We used to own our slaves; now we just rent them.
No one can terrorize a whole nation, unless we are all his accomplices.
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.
...if what I say is responsible, I alone am responsible for the saying of it...
He was a resolute and uncompromising man of truth.
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.