Top 19 Quotes & Sayings by Jonathan Alter

Explore popular quotes and sayings by an American journalist Jonathan Alter.

Last updated on December 21, 2024.

Jonathan H. Alter is a liberal American journalist, best-selling author, Emmy-winning documentary filmmaker and television producer who was a columnist and senior editor for Newsweek magazine from 1983 until 2011. Alter has written several books about American presidents, most recently His Very Best: Jimmy Carter, a Life, published in 2020, the first independent biography of Carter. Alter is a contributing correspondent to NBC News, where since 1996 he has appeared on NBC, MSNBC, and CNBC. In 2021, Alter launched a newsletter called "Old Goats: Ruminating With Friends", where he has conversations with accomplished people who share their wisdom and experience. In 2013 and 2014, Alter served as an executive producer on the Amazon Studios production Alpha House, which starred John Goodman, Mark Consuelos, Clark Johnson, and Matt Malloy. In 2019, he co-produced and co-directed Breslin and Hamill: Deadline Artists," a documentary about the columnists Jimmy Breslin and Pete Hamill, which received the 2020 Emmy Award for Outstanding Historical Documentary.

American - Journalist | Born: October 6, 1957

Source: Wikipedia

Unless the digital divide is narrowed soon, the United States may be headed to the class warfare of a century ago, the last time the economy changed so fundamentally. It won't be pleasant.

Jonathan Alter

If Franz Kafka were alive today he'd be writing about customer service.

Jonathan Alter

The price of loyalty is incompetence.

Jonathan Alter

Obama was willing to compromise and Republicans were not. That's not a biased statement. One of my problems with the limitations of journalism is that straightforward descriptions of reality are seen as being biased.

Jonathan Alter

Every patient reacts a little differently, both biologically and psychologically. The only constant in cancer is inconstancy; the only certainty is a future of uncertainty, a truism for all of modern life but one made vivid by life-threatening illness.

Jonathan Alter

Almost no one under 60 remembers what fundraising was like before Watergate. Until the 1970s, campaign money was collected by "bagmen," familiar characters from the world of organized crime. As fans of Boardwalk Empire know, a bagman is a political fixer who walked around with stacks of $100 and $1,000 bills. At lower levels, he used brown paper bags. In presidential campaigns, the cash was more likely to be in briefcases. Classier that way.

Jonathan Alter

Logic can convince but only emotion can motivate.

Jonathan Alter

The only reason the House hasn't done even more damage is that the Senate often sands down the most noxious ideas, making the bills merely bad, not disastrous.

Jonathan Alter

The only thing worse than a silly politician analyzing art is a silly artist analyzing politics

Jonathan Alter

The basic problem is with the business model of journalism. That business model is premised on the idea that talk is cheap and reporting is expensive.

Jonathan Alter

In the press grandstand where I watched Discovery rise against the cloudless sky, the media hit the abort button on cynicism. The Earth shook to the sounds of man, three miles away. The candle lit. . . only someone stripped of awe can leave a launch untouched.

Jonathan Alter

The key to fixing education is better teaching, and the key to better teaching is figuring out who can teach and who can't.

Jonathan Alter

They say that 'history is an argument without end.' In Thompson's skillful hands, this momentous argument between two old friends on the most critical issue of the last century is thus history at its best. Thompson's judicious and delicious depiction of Nitze and Kennan will fascinate anyone who cares about the Cold War or the ways that human beings shape the future.

Jonathan Alter

With his ABC News experience, perhaps Pierre Salinger's next job could be cohosting-with Oliver Stone-a 24-hour Conspiracy Network.

Jonathan Alter

Millions of Americans would still despair in the eight long years of the Depression that lay ahead and many of their individual dreams would be dashed on the rocks of economic hardship. But collectively, the country was in a new place, with a new confidence that the federal government would actively try to solve problems rather than fiddle or cater to the rich. Hope was no longer for Pollyannas; the cynics about the American system were in retreat.

Jonathan Alter

If it's easy for the government to learn about us, it should be easier for us to learn about the government.

Jonathan Alter

It sometimes takes a while for executives to figure out that the reporters they think of as little bugs to be squashed or spun can be more powerful than they are.

Jonathan Alter

I think it's a terrible system, but money in politics is like water running downhill -- it finds its way.

Jonathan Alter

By laying the groundwork for a system centered on home ownership rather than the public housing popular in Europe, the New Deal made possible the great postwar housing boom that populated the Sun Belt and boosted millions of Americans into the middle class, where, ironically, they often became Republicans.

Jonathan Alter

Top 19 Quotes & Sayings by Jonathan Alter

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