Edward R. Murrow's Quotes

Anyone who isn't confused really doesn't understand the situation.

We cannot defend freedom abroad by deserting it at home.

Just because your voice reaches halfway around the world doesn't mean you are wiser than when it reached only to the end of the bar.

Good night, and good luck.

To be persuasive we must be believable; to be believable we must be credible; credible we must be truthful.

We must not confuse dissent with disloyalty. When the loyal opposition dies, I think the soul of America dies with it.

No one can terrorize a whole nation, unless we are all his accomplices.

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.

Our major obligation is not to mistake slogans for solutions.

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.

Difficulty is the excuse history never accepts.

The obscure we see eventually. The completely obvious, it seems, takes longer.

Most truths are so naked that people feel sorry for them and cover them up, at least a little bit.

Everyone is a prisoner of his own experiences. No one can eliminate prejudices - just recognize them.

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.

Just once in a while let us exalt the importance of ideas and information.

We cannot make good news out of bad practice.

The politician in my country seeks votes, affection and respect, in that order. With few notable exceptions, they are simply men who want to be loved.

A satellite has no conscience.

Fame is morally neutral.

People say conversation is a lost art; how often I have wished it were.

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.

Independence did not mean chauvinism and narrow nationalism.

None can be more negative in its impact than the limitation on human resource capacity.

We have much work ahead, to stand still.

Belize pledges it continued support to the aspirations of the 23 million people of Taiwan to be full participants in all organs and agencies of the international community.