Edward R. Murrow Quotes and Sayings - Page 1
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“A nation of sheep will beget a government of wolves.”
-- Edward R. Murrow -
“I simply cannot accept that there are, on every story, two equal and logical sides to an argument.”
-- Edward R. MurrowSource : "Fictional character: Edward R. Murrow". "Good Night, and Good Luck", 2005.
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“To be persuasive we must be believable; to be believable we must be credible; credible we must be truthful.”
-- Edward R. MurrowSource : Testimony before a Congressional Committee, pdaa.publicdiplomacy.org. May 1963.
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“Difficulty is the excuse history never accepts.”
-- Edward R. MurrowSource : Comments after President John F. Kennedy's inaugural address, January 20, 1961.
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“Everyone is a prisoner of his own experiences. No one can eliminate prejudices - just recognize them.”
-- Edward R. MurrowSource : Television broadcast, December 31, 1955.
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“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. MurrowSource : On receiving the "Family of Man" Award from the Protestant Council of the City of New York, October 28, 1964.
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“We must not confuse dissent with disloyalty. When the loyal opposition dies, I think the soul of America dies with it.”
-- Edward R. MurrowSource : YouTube Chanel "KD"/ "Edward R. Murrow: 'A Report on Senator Joseph R. McCarthy'", www.youtube.com. November 10, 2014.
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“To be credible we must be truthful.”
-- Edward R. MurrowSource : Testimony before a Congressional Committee, pdaa.publicdiplomacy.org. May 1963.
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“American traditions and the American ethic require us to be truthful, but the most important reason is that truth is the best propaganda and lies are the worst. To be persuasive we must be believable; to be believable we must be credible; to be credible we must be truthful. It is as simple as that.”
-- Edward R. MurrowSource : Testimony before a Congressional Committee, pdaa.publicdiplomacy.org. May 1963.
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“People say conversation is a lost art; how often I have wished it were.”
-- Edward R. Murrow -
“A blur of blinks, taps, jiggles, pivots and shifts ... the body language of a man wishing urgently to be elsewhere.”
-- Edward R. Murrow -
“We must not confuse dissent with disloyalty.”
-- Edward R. Murrow -
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“When the politicians complain that TV turns the proceedings into a circus, it should be made clear that the circus was already there, and that TV has merely demonstrated that not all the performers are well trained.”
-- Edward R. MurrowSource : "Dons Or Crooners?: Three Lectures on the Subject of Communication in the Modern World" by British Association for the Advancement of Science, 1959.
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“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 ... We proclaim ourselves, as indeed we are, the defenders of freedom, wherever it continues to exist in the world, but we cannot defend freedom abroad by deserting it at home.”
-- Edward R. MurrowSource : Edward R. Murrow (1967). “In Search of Light: The Broadcasts of Edward R. Murrow, 1938-1961”
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“Just once in a while, let us exalt the importance of ideas and information.”
-- Edward R. Murrow -
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“I am seized with an abiding fear regarding what these two instruments are doing to our society, our culture and our heritage. Our history will be what we make it. And if there are any historians about fifty or a hundred years from now, and there should be preserved the kinescopes for one week of all three networks, they will there find recorded in black and white, or color, evidence of decadence, escapism and insulation from the realities of the world in which we live,”
-- Edward R. MurrowSource : "Fictional character: Edward R. Murrow". "Good Night, and Good Luck", www.imdb.com. 2005.
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“The best speakers know enough to be scared…the only difference between the pros and the novices is that the pros have trained the butterflies to fly in formation.”
-- 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. MurrowSource : Radio-Television News Directors Association Convention Address, delivered 15 October 1958, Chicago, Illinois
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“The obscure we see eventually. The completely obvious, it seems, takes longer.”
-- Edward R. MurrowSource : "Mad about Physics : Braintwisters, Paradoxes, and Curiosities". Book by Christopher Jargodzki, 2001.
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“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 -
“I have always been on the side of the heretics, against those who burned them, because the heretics so often turned out to be right....Dead, but right.”
-- Edward R. Murrow -
“No one can terrorize a whole nation, unless we are all his accomplices.”
-- Edward R. MurrowSource : "See It Now" (CBS), March 7, 1954.
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“Our major obligation is not to mistake slogans for solutions.”
-- Edward R. MurrowSource : Edward R. Murrow (1967). “In Search of Light: The Broadcasts of Edward R. Murrow, 1938-1961”
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“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 -
“Most truths are so naked that people feel sorry for them and cover them up, at least a little bit.”
-- Edward R. Murrow -
“Of this be wary. Honor and fame are often regarded as interchangeable. Both involve an appraisal of the individual. . . but I suggest this difference. Fame is morally neutral.”
-- Edward R. Murrow -
“We will not be driven by fear into an age of unreason.”
-- Edward R. Murrow -
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“It is well to remember that freedom through the press is the thing that comes first. Most of us probably feel we couldn't be free without newspapers, and that is the real reason we want the newspapers to be free.”
-- Edward R. Murrow -
“Don't be deluded into believing that the titular heads of the networks control what appears on their networks. They all have better taste.”
-- Edward R. Murrow
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