Mike Wallace's Quotes

Let the answer hang there for two or three or four seconds.

Retiring is one thing. Being retired is something else altogether.

There's not a better job in journalism than the one we have, seriously on '60 Minutes' - not a better job.

When I came to CBS it was the mother church. I mean that was - everybody wanted to go to work for CBS News.

When I went to Ann Arbor, University of Michigan, what I really wanted to be was a radio announcer.

Yeah, I was a pretty good kid, you know, I was - I was- I was an overachiever and I worked very hard, played a hell of a fiddle.

You want to put a man at ease.

You're not a nutcase if you want to go see a psychiatrist.

Covering Richard Nixon's triumphant run in 1968 turned out to be my last major assignment as a general correspondent for CBS News. In September of that year, '60 Minutes' made its debut and I began the best, the most fulfilling job a reporter could imagine.

Even though Jack Kennedy and I were about the same age and lived in the same neighborhood and attended the same elementary school, our paths seldom crossed during the years he lived in Brookline. I'm sure that in time, I would have gotten to know him better if he hadn't moved away.

I had my hearing aid fixed today so that I could properly hear you. I can't see as well. I now have - this has stopped me from smoking - a pacemaker, have for about the last 15 years. No, I don't like getting old.

I met all these important people and did all these stories, but I always had such excellent producers and assistants. I could show up to interview a world leader or a criminal and they would have things so well prepared anyone could have done it. It wasn't about 'me,' it was about 'us.'

I read rip-and-read news, but I wasn't a reporter. I was reading the wire, and the other thing was, I was reading commercials - and I could do a hell of a commercial.

I used to have acne when I was a kid growing up. You can imagine how serious that was in making you feel bad. And I had skinny bow legs. I mean, as a kid growing up, I was an insecure fella.

I was so low that I wanted to exit. And I took a bunch of pills, and they were sleeping pills. And at least they would put me to sleep, and maybe I wouldn't wake up, and that was fine.

I went to work when I was a young fellow and I loved what I did. And I just kept working. And when I decided that maybe the time had come for me to quit, I got depressed. What could I do if I didn't work?

I'm a reporter; you can't subpoena people to talk to you. If you write to them and try to call them on the phone and they don't answer or so forth, then take them unawares.

In making the jump from a local program to the showcase of a coast-to-coast broadcast, Ted Yates and I were determined to maintain the candid, sometimes combative style we'd introduced on 'Night Beat.' But that proved easier said than done.

In the best of all possible worlds, everybody would be honorable, but that's not the way the world works. Reputations for reporters are made by discovering things underneath that rock.

Rooney, of course, he believes that he is the reason that people stick around all the way through the show. They'll put up with anything, you know, in order to get to Rooney, and that's why we're at number 16 or 14 or whatever.

The problem became this: We became a caricature of ourselves. We were after light, and it began to look as though we were after heat, not to reveal some information or not to find out the story.

To go around the world, to talk to almost anybody you want to talk to, to have enough time on the air, so that you could really tell a full story. What a voyage of discovery it was.

We used to sit around and chortle, 'Look what this guy said five years ago, and today look what he's doing. Let's stick it to him!' It's as simple as that, I swear.

What's an ambush interview? You walk up to a fellow who you want to talk to, and he hasn't been - he hadn't been willing to talk to you before. You've sent him letters, and you've tried to talk to him on the phone. So you walk up to him on the street and ask him a question - that's an ambush?

There's nothing, repeat, nothing to be ashamed of when you're going through a depression. If you get help, the chances of your licking it are really good. But, you have to get yourself onto a safe path.

I cannot improve on those spoken for many years by a true legend who preceded me at CBS News. He would say, simply, 'good night, and good luck.'