Edward R. Murrow Quotes
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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.
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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.
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Tuberculosis, starvation, fatigue, and there are many who have no desire to live.
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It has always seemed to me the real art in this business is not so much moving information or guidance or policy five or 10,000 miles. That is an electronic problem. The real art is to move it the last three feet in face to face conversation.
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People say conversation is a lost art; how often I have wished it were.
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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.
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A satellite has no conscience.
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We will not be driven by fear ... if we remember that we are not descended from fearful men.
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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.
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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.
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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.
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I simply cannot accept that there are on every story two equal and logical sides to an argument.
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We are to a large extent an imitative society.
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Fame is morally neutral.
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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.
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The real crucial link in the international exchange is the last three feet, which is bridged by personal contact, one person talking to another.
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Good night, and good luck.
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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.
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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.
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Anyone who isn't confused really doesn't understand the situation.
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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.
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We're 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.
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We are in the same tent as the clowns and the freaks - that's show business.
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The politician is trained in the art of inexactitude. His words tend to be blunt or rounded, because if they have a cutting edge they may later return to wound him.
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I have said, and I believe, that potentially we have in this country a free enterprise system of radio and television which is superior to any other. But to achieve its promise, it must be both free and enterprising. There is no suggestion here that networks or individual stations should operate as philanthropies. But I can find nothing in the Bill of Rights or in the Communications Act which says that they must increase their net profits each year, lest the Republic collapse.
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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.
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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.
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A blur of blinks, taps, jiggles, pivots and shifts ... the body language of a man wishing urgently to be elsewhere.
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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.
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No one can terrorize a whole nation, unless we are all his accomplices.
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