Top 83 Quotes & Sayings by 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.

Fame is morally neutral.

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.

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.

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.

Just once in a while let us exalt the importance of ideas and information.

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.

Our major obligation is not to mistake slogans for solutions.

The obscure we see eventually. The completely obvious, it seems, takes longer.

Good night, and good luck.

Most truths are so naked that people feel sorry for them and cover them up, at least a little bit.

Difficulty is the excuse history never accepts.

People say conversation is a lost art; how often I have wished it were.

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 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.

No one can terrorize a whole nation, unless we are all his accomplices.

I have an old-fashioned belief that Americans like to make up their own minds on the basis of all available information.

Everyone is a prisoner of his own experiences. No one can eliminate prejudices - just recognize them.

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.

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.

We cannot defend freedom abroad by deserting it at home.

A satellite has no conscience.

We must not confuse dissent with disloyalty. When the loyal opposition dies, I think the soul of America dies with it.

We cannot make good news out of bad practice.

I simply cannot accept that there are on every story two equal and logical sides to an argument.

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.

I would like television to produce some itching pills rather than this endless outpouring of tranquilizers.

Just once in a while, let us exalt the importance of ideas and information.

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.

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.

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.

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.

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.

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.

Learn your language well and command it well, and you will have the first component to life.

To be credible we must be truthful.

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.

The real crucial link in the international exchange is the last three feet, which is bridged by personal contact, one person talking to another.

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.

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.

All I can hope to teach my son is to tell the truth and fear no man.

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.

The obscure we always see sooner or later; the obvious always seems to take a little longer.

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.

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.

We will not be driven by fear into an age of unreason.

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.

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.

A nation of sheep will beget a government of wolves.

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.

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.

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.

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.

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.

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.

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.

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.

The Wright brothers' first flight was not reported in a single newspaper because every rookie reporter knew what could and couldn't be done.

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.