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.
—Edward R. Murrow
Topics: Television
Just once in a while let us exalt the importance of ideas and information.
—Edward R. Murrow
Topics: Ideas
Difficulty is the excuse history never accepts.
—Edward R. Murrow
Topics: Difficulty, Posterity, Excuses
Anyone who isn’t confused doesn’t really understand the situation.
—Edward R. Murrow
Topics: War
A nation of sheep will beget a government of wolves.
—Edward R. Murrow
Topics: Government
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.
—Edward R. Murrow
To be persuasive, we must be believable; to be believable, we must be credible; to be credible, we must be truthful.
—Edward R. Murrow
Topics: Truth
The obscure we see eventually, the completely apparent takes longer.
—Edward R. Murrow
Topics: Vision, Prophecy
We cannot defend freedom abroad by deserting it at home.
—Edward R. Murrow
Topics: Freedom
Everyone is a prisoner of his own experiences. No one can eliminate prejudices—just recognize them.
—Edward R. Murrow
Topics: Prejudice
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.
—Edward R. Murrow
Topics: Media
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.
—Edward R. Murrow
Topics: Communication
No one can terrorize a whole nation, unless we are all his accomplices.
—Edward R. Murrow
Topics: Terrorism, Nation
We must not confuse dissent with disloyalty. When the loyal opposition dies, I think the soul of America dies with it.
—Edward R. Murrow
Topics: Protest
Our major obligation is not to mistake slogans for solutions.
—Edward R. Murrow
Topics: Business, One liners, Government, Obligation
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.
—Edward R. Murrow
Most truths are so naked that people feel sorry for them and cover them up, at least a little bit.
—Edward R. Murrow
Topics: Truth
We must not confuse dissent with disloyalty. 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.
—Edward R. Murrow
Topics: Anxiety, Protest, Fear, Dissent
Wondering Whom to Read Next?
- Howard Cosell American Journalist
- Charles Kuralt American Journalist
- Heywood Broun American Journalist
- Duke Ellington American Musician
- Diane Sawyer American TV Journalist
- Walter Lippmann American Journalist
- Dorothy Thompson American Journalist, Writer
- Herbert Hoover American Statesman
- Lowell Thomas American Writer
- B. C. Forbes Scottish-born American Journalist
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