45 quotes
Just once in a while let us exalt the importance of ideas and information.
RTNDA Convention Speech (1958)
We are to a large extent an imitative society.
RTNDA Convention Speech (1958)
A satellite has no conscience.
We can deny our heritage and our history, but we cannot escape responsibility for the result. There is no way for a citizen of a republic to abdicate his responsibilities.
See It Now (1954)
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.
Do not be deluded into believing that the titular heads of the networks control what appears on their networks. They all have better taste.
RTNDA Convention Speech (1958)
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.
Speech to his staff (1954)
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.
RTNDA Convention Speech (1958)
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.
This I Believe (1951)
This just might do nobody any good. At the end of this discourse a few people may accuse this reporter of fouling his own comfortable nest, and your organization may be accused of having given hospitality to heretical and even dangerous thoughts.
RTNDA Convention Speech (1958)
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.
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.
Broadcast from Buchenwald (1945)
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.
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?
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 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.
Good night, and good luck.
The newest computer can merely compound...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 & how to say it.
We will not be driven by fear into an age of unreason if we… remember that we are not descended from fearful men, not from men who feared to write, to speak, to associate and to defend causes which were, for the moment unpopular.
We can deny our heritage and our history, but we cannot escape responsibility for the result...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.