Quotes by David Halberstam

“Memory is often less about the truth than about what we want it to be.”

“If youre a reporter, the easiest thing in the world is to get a story. The hardest thing is to verify. The old sins were about getting something wrong, that was a cardinal sin. The new sin is to be boring.”

“What happened very quickly was a move away from the bravery of the kids fighting.”

“I think you always go out and do books based on what youre curious about.”

“This award is very special because it recognizes what I think of as members of the infantry -- reporters who do the heavy lifting, even though they dont personally have the high public profile that some journalists in print and broadcast media attain. Their commitment to reporting difficult stories over the long haul, often against the conventional grain, is a tremendous public service, and the example of endurance and honor that they bring to the profession is a reminder of what journalism is about at its best.”

“There would be a very nice small book in it about another time and era in America, a kind of sweetness and friendship,”

“I think I got very lucky on this, ... The Red Sox players of that team just were particularly pleasant. Ted Williams was larger than life and exuberant and contentious and cantankerous, but great fun to be with.”

“[DiMaggio] could see it, and he understood completely where Harry Walker might hit the ball, ... Dominic will tell you that he still wonders if he could have gotten Slaughter at third. And Slaughter told him later, I never would have come home if you had been out there. ”

“I have no doubt he would have been a huge success no matter what he put his mind to,”

“I am made nervous, as someone who works in the same vineyard, by the idea of inventing himself as a fictional character, ... It seems unnecessary. It seems taking a major liberty. And the problem with it is if you invent the fictional character and you take this liberty, then the reader is going to think what other liberties?”

[On writing:] Theres a great quote by Julius Irving that went, Being a professional is doing the things you love to do, on the days you dont feel like doing them., March 25, 2007.)

There was, I found, always more to learn.

Fear was the terrible secret of the battlefiled and could afflict the brave as well as the timid. Worse it was contagious, and could destroy a unit before a battle even began. Because of that, commanders were first and foremost in the fear suppression business.

Officers came and went and were never a part of daily life.

The men were always wary of an officer who took form more seriously than function.

Why did McNamara have such good figures? Why did McNamara have such good staff work and Ball such poor staff work? The next day Ball would angrily dispatch his staff to come up with the figures, to find out how McNamara had gotten them, and the staff would burrow away and occasionally find that one of the reasons that Ball did not have comparable figures was that they did not always exist. McNamara had invented them, he dissembled even within the bureaucracy, though, of course, always for a good cause. It was part of his sense of service. He believed in what he did, and thus the morality of it was assured, and everything else fell into place. It was all right to lie and dissemble for the right causes. It was part of service, loyalty to the President, not to the nation, not to colleagues, it was a very special bureaucratic-corporate definition of integrity; you could do almost anything you wanted as long as it served your superior.

It was the kind of country that made you feel better about yourself.

When he studied, it was not so much for a promotion as to EXCEL at his job.

He saw the pleasure you took from your job every day of his life, and THAT was what he wanted.

All professions have some element of theater to them.