Top 208 Quotes & Sayings by Walter Cronkite - Page 3

I don't think people ought to believe only one news medium. They ought to read and they ought to go to opinion journals and all the rest of it. I think it's terribly important that this be taught in the public schools, because otherwise, we're gonna get to a situation because of economic pressures and other things where television's all you've got left. And that would be disastrous. We can't cover the news in a half-hour event evening. That's ridiculous.

We know that no one should tell a woman she has to bear an unwanted child. We know that religious beliefs cannot define patriotism.

It is not the reporter's job to be a patriot or to presume to determine where patriotism lies. His job is to relate the facts.

The fact that you are here tonight gathered together with us testifies to the fact you understand the need for this organization and the need for redoubling our efforts in this organization to try to assure that democracy as represented by the United States must depend upon a total freedom of religion, which is written into our Constitution, of course, and the mere suggestion that anyone could maintain that one's patriotism, one's devotion to one's country can be judged by one's religion is so vile, so vile that we have to take to the streets indeed and to put it aside.

The ruling class is the rich. . . . And those people are so able to manipulate our democracy that they really control the democracy.

A handful of us determine what will be on the evening news broadcasts, or, for that matter, in the New York Times or Washington Post or Wall Street Journal. Indeed it is a handful of us with this awesome power.And those [news stories] available to us already have been culled and re-culled by persons far outside our control.

Not only do we have a right to know, we have a duty to know what our Government is doing in our name. If there's a criticism to be made today, it's that the press isn't doing enough to put the pressure on the government to provide information.

Putting it as strongly as I can, the failure to give free airtime for our political campaigns endangers our democracy.

The battle for the airwaves cannot be limited to only those who have the bank accounts to pay for the battle and win it.

Would it be better to have a president who cries easily? Well, that depends on what he cried about. I would not like the thought of a president who could not cry. That would be worse than one who cried over the right things. Which, in this case, would be the things I would cry over.

Success is more permanent when you achieve it without destroying your principles.

I grew my mustache when I was nineteen in order to look older. I never shaved it off even though it overran its usefulness many, many years ago. Once you get started in television, people associate you with your physical appearance - and that includes the mustache. So I can't shave it off now. If I did, I'd have to answer too much mail.

Terrible, it was terrible. Even today and it's been several months now you just bring it up and I tear up a little bit, terribly. You know when you're that close that long and got along as well as we did, we seldom had any serious arguments. We might have - might discuss which movie we wanted to see and what play we wanted to go to, where we ought to go for a vacation but that usually didn't last very long because we were much of the same mind all the time.

To say that we are closer to victory today is to believe in the face of the evidence, the optimists who have been wrong in the past. To say that we are mired in stalemate seems the only realistic, yet unsatisfactory, conclusion. It is increasingly clear to this reporter that the only rational way out then will be to negotiate, not as victors, but as an honorable people who lived up to their pledge to defend democracy, and did the best they could.

We've always known you can gain circulation or viewers by cheapening the product, and now you're finding the bad driving out the good.

For many years, I did my best to report on the issues of the day in as objective a manner as possible. When I had my own strong opinions, as I often did, I tried not to communicate them to my audience. Now, however, my circumstances are different. I am in a position to speak my mind. And that is what I propose to do.

I think that being liberal, in the true sense, is being nondoctrinaire, nondogmatic, noncomitted to a cause but examining each case on its merits. Being left of center is another thing; it's a political position. I think most newspapermen by definition have to be liberal; if they're not liberal, by my definition of it, then they can hardly be good newspapermen.

People who understand music hear sounds that no one else makes when Frank Sinatra sings.

Whatever the cost of our libraries, the price is cheap compared to that of an ignorant nation.

I am a news presenter, a news broadcaster, an anchorman, a managing editor - not a commentator or analyst. I feel no compulsion to be a pundit.

Television [is] a high-impact medium. It does some things no other force can do-transmitting electronic pictures through the air. Still, as an explored, comprehensive medium, it is not a substitute for print.

I am dumbfounded that there hasn't been a crackdown with the libel and slander laws on some of these would-be writers and reporters on the Internet.

As anchorman of the CBS Evening News, I signed off my nightly broadcasts for nearly two decades with a simple statement: "And that's the way it is." To me, that encapsulates the newsman's highest ideal: to report the facts as he sees them, without regard for the consequences or controversy that may ensue.

Our task is not to tell the truth; we are opinion molders.

The debates are part of the unconscionable fraud that our political campaigns have become a format that defies meaningful discourse. They should be charged with sabotaging the electoral process.

Not only do we have a right to know, we have a duty to know what our Government is doing in our name.

I have never pretended to be a great writer. I am totally immodest about being a great reporter and a good news writer. I write fast and I write accurately, nearly as accurately as anybody can be, and that's my skill.

Those advocates who work for world peace by urging a system of world government are called impractical dreamers. Those impractical dreamers are entitled to ask their critics what is so practical about war.

Ethics must be reintroduced to public service to restore people's faith in government. Without such faith, democracy cannot flourish. Your ambitious agenda is filling a desperate need.

Interviewing friends is a tough one. Your duty to the interview must transcend your friendship. Occasionally you'll lose a friend.

In all my years as a news commentator I was never once, able to tell the truth, about anything.

I never had the ambition to be something. I had the ambition to do something.

It seems to rise again when the crisis times come, and this is a time of most severe crisis, as we all know, not just for the history of the United States and the survival indeed of our democracy, but for the future peace of the world. And never before probably has the need for interfaith commitment been nearly as great as it is at this very moment.

Everybody knows that there's a liberal, that there's a heavy liberal persuasion among correspondents.

Leaving San Francisco is like saying goodbye to an old sweetheart. You want to linger as long as possible.

The perils of duck hunting are great- especially for the duck.

The first priority of humankind in this era is to establish an effective system of world law that will assure peace with justice among the peoples of the world.

Television... is not a substitute for print.

Probably the most important single element that I found in my own marriage was a sense of humor. My wife had a delicious sense of humor, and I think I have an adequate one.

I guess I showed certain signs of being a workaholic in early years; I had a magazine route very early on - I must have been about seven or eight years old or something like that - when I was carrying Liberty magazine, trying to win green and brown coupons; I eventually [won] a pony.

It is a seldom proffered argument as to the advantages of a free press that it has a major function in keeping the government itself informed as to what the government is doing.

Reagan was an exceedingly likeable guy, just a heck of a nice fellow, despite his politics. He was funny and loved a good joke, the dirtier, I'm afraid the more ethnic, the better. I don't think he brought very much to the presidency, except charisma and success.

Everything is being compressed into tiny tablets. You take a little pill of news every day-23 minutes-and that's supposed to be enough.

For how many thousands of years now have we humans been what we insist on calling "civilized?" And yet, in total contradiction, we also persist in the savage belief that we must occasionally, at least, settle our arguments by killing one another.

This opens the door on another chapter of history.

The daily coverage of the Vietnamese battlefield helped convince the American public that the carnage was not worth the candle.

Pat Robertson has written in a book a few years ago that we should have a world government, but only when the Messiah arrives. He wrote, literally, any attempt to achieve world order before that time must be the work of the Devil. Well join me - I’m glad to sit here at the right hand of Satan.

For many years, I did my best to report on the issues of the day in as objective a manner as possible. When I had my own strong opinions, as I often did, I tried not to communicate them to my audience.

I'm very proud of what Harry Truman turned out to be in office and the record he made. Certainly I think he'll go down in history as one of the greats, because of his conscience, his determination to stick with what he knew was right.

I am neither Republican nor Democrat. I am a registered independent because I find that I cast my votes not on the basis of party loyalty but on the issues of the moment and my assessment of the candidates.

We're living in a state where no one can trust his telephone conversations, nor even his personal conversations in a room, in a bar or anywhere else.

It seems to me that instead of cutting taxes, we ought to be increasing the taxes to pay off the deficit, rather than let that thing build up to the point where our grandchildren's grandchildren are going to be paying for our period of time and our years at the helm.

The invasion of Iraq was illegal from the start.

I think somebody ought to do a survey as to how many great, important men have quit to spend time with their families who spent any more time with their family. Probably less.

A system of world order-preferably a system of world government -is mandatory... The proud nations someday will see the light and, for the common good and their own survival, yield up their precious sovereignty.

When Moses was alive, these pyramids were a thousand years old. Here began the history of architecture. Here people learned to measure time by a calendar, to plot the stars by astronomy and chart the earth by geometry. And here they developed that most awesome of all ideas - the idea of eternity.

We cannot defer this responsibility to posterity. Time will not wait.

Old anchormen, you see, don't fade away. They just keep coming back for more. And that's the way it is, Friday, March 6, 1981.

So now the question is, basically, right now, how will the Osama Bin Laden tape affect the election? And I have a feeling that it could tilt the election a bit. In fact, I'm a little inclined to think that Karl Rove, the political manager at the White House, who is a very clever man, that he probably set up bin Laden to this thing.

I'd like to be a song and dance man.