Jonathan > Jonathan's Quotes

“A nation of sheep will beget a government of wolves.”
― Edward R. Murrow

“We cannot defend freedom abroad by deserting it at home.”
― Edward R. Murrow

“We must not confuse dissent with disloyalty. When the loyal opposition dies, I think the soul of America dies with it.”
― Edward R. Murrow

“We must not confuse dissent with disloyalty. We must remember always that accusation is not proof and that conviction depends upon evidence and due process of law. We will not walk in fear, one of another. 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 – not from men who feared to write, to speak, to associate, and to defend causes that were, for the moment, unpopular”
― Edward R. Murrow

“Anyone who isn't confused really doesn't understand the situation.”
― Edward R. Murrow

“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.”
― Edward R. Murrow

“A great many people think they are thinking when they are really rearranging their prejudices.”
― Edward R. Murrow

“No one can terrorize a whole nation, unless we are all his accomplices.”
― Edward R. Murrow

“Our major obligation is not to mistake slogans for solutions.”
― Edward R. Murrow

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

“Most truth's are so naked that people feel sorry for them and cover them up, at least a little bit.”
― Edward R. Murrow

“I began by saying that our history will be what we make it. If we go on as we are, then history will take its revenge, and retribution will not limp in catching up with us.

We are to a large extent an imitative society. If one or two or three corporations would undertake to devote just a small fraction of their advertising appropriation along the lines that I have suggested, the procedure would grow by contagion; the economic burden would be bearable, and there might ensue a most exciting adventure--exposure to ideas and the bringing of reality into the homes of the nation.

To those who say people wouldn't look; they wouldn't be interested; they're too complacent, indifferent and insulated, I can only reply: There is, in one reporter's opinion, considerable evidence against that contention. But even if they are right, what have they got to lose? Because if they are right, and this instrument is good for nothing but to entertain, amuse and insulate, then the tube is flickering now and we will soon see that the whole struggle is lost.

This instrument can teach, it can illuminate; yes, and it can even inspire. But it can do so only to the extent that humans are determined to use it to those ends. Otherwise it is merely wires and lights in a box. There is a great and perhaps decisive battle to be fought against ignorance, intolerance and indifference.”
― Edward R. Murrow

“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. ”
― Edward R. Murrow

“The obscure we see eventually. The completely obvious, it seems, takes longer.”
― Edward R. Murrow

“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

“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

“Difficulty is the excuse history never accepts.”
― Edward R. Murrow

“People say conversation is a lost art; how often I have wished it were.”
― Edward R. Murrow

“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.”
― Edward R. Murrow