Quotes by Edward R. Murrow

“[The] See It Now ... See It Now.”

“The movie is the achievement. To be part of that particular artistic achievement, its great. Thats the reward.”

“We are in the same tent as the clowns and the freaks-thats show business.”

“The advantage of modern means of communication is they enable you to worry about things in all of the world”

Difficulty is the excuse history never accepts.

We cannot defend freedom abroad by deserting it at home.

A nation of sheep will beget a government of wolves.

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

It is not necessary to remind you of the fact that your voice, amplified to the degree where it reaches from one end of the country to the other, does not confer upon you greater wisdom than when your voice reached only from one end of the bar to the other. All of these things you know.

Just because your voice reaches halfway around the world doesnt mean youre any wiser than when it reached only to the end of the bar.

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

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

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.

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.

The right of dissent, or, if you prefer, the right to be wrong, is surely fundamental to the existence of a democratic society. That’s the right that went first in every nation that stumbled down the trail toward totalitarianism.

Our major obligation is not to mistake slogans for solutions.

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.

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.

We are in the same tent as the clowns and the freaks-thats show business.

We will not be driven by fear ... if we remember that we are not descended from fearful men.