American Journalist Quotes

Above the titles of wife and mother, which, although dear, are transitory and accidental, there is the title human being, which precedes and out-ranks every other.

I get letters from people who say, 'What have you got against women?' What could I possibly have against women? I've married three of them.

And each time I pressed the shutter release it was a shouted condemnation hurled with the hope that the picture might survive through the years, with the hope that they might echo through the minds of men in the future - causing them caution and remembrance and realization.

W. Eugene Smith

No man can feel himself alone
The while he bravely stands
Between the best friends ever known
His two good, honest hands.

One of the problems with NPR is that there is so much political correctness that if you've got a name that looks like it was made up by Rudyard Kipling, you've got a better chance of getting hired. I'm a white guy named Tony Snow, for heaven's sake. That's as white as it goes.

The failures of the press have contributed immensely to the emergence of a talk-show nation, in which public discourse is reduced to ranting and raving and posturing. We now have a mainstream press whose news agenda is increasingly influenced by this netherworld.

On broadcast journalism:

You can shine a light in a dark corner and make life better for people living there in the dark.

In all, 86 per cent of the increased life expectancy was due to decreases in infectious diseases. And the bulk of the decline in infectious disease deaths occurred prior to the age of antibiotics. Less than 4 per cent of the total improvement in life expectancy since 1700s can be credited to twentieth-century advances in medical care.

We have a new class in this country: the deserving rich.... The deserving rich do nice things for each other. Comforting the unafflicted is something that comes naturally to them.

It's not the nineteenth century; I'm not meant to be judged on how good a housekeeper I am. Getting down on the floor with a lemon and a bucket of vinegar does not make me a better person.

Homicide is the major leagues, the center ring, the show. It always has been... It goes beyond academic degrees, specialized training or book learning, because all the theory in the world means nothing if you can't read the street.

Although they are unfailingly gracious, evangelicals are not so good at respecting professional boundaries.

I don't particularly like South Korean literature.

Brian Reynolds Myers

We tend to tell strangers what we think will make us sound good. I myself, to my utter amazement, informed a telephone pollster that I exercised regularly, a bare-faced lie.

The true meaning of money yet remains to be popularly explained and comprehended.

Theodore Dreiser

I had no idea how Stevenson's cases would hold up under close scrutiny. But given what was at stake - nothing less than possible concrete evidence of life after death - weren't they at least worth a visit?

Many of the Huichols and North American peyotists claim that when one eats peyote, one is "tasting oneself: if the user is pure, this cactus is "sweet." Barbara Myerhoff, accompanying the Huichols during their 1965 and 1966 hunts, recorded that they urge new participants to "Chew it well. It is sweet, like tortillas.

What allows genius to flower is not neurosis but its opposite, ego strength, meaning (among other things) ordinary, Sunday-school virtues such as tenacity and above all the ability to survive disappointment.

In religious matters it is now fashionable to define tolerance as the absence of criticism of any standard religion. All too often, this absence of criticism degenerates into a conspicuous absence of thought.

It appears to me that our sex is only discussed publicly in a derogatory manner. The respectable woman is doomed to anonymity.

Any chief executive who hires a consultant to give them strategy should be fired.

Did I choose you? Did you choose me? And what difference does it make? All that really matters, friend, is that we chose together.

The best way to get thrown out of the columnists' club is to be uncertain about anything whatsoever on this earth.

Astronomy is something a culture does when it wants to understand itself.

In an effort to reclaim our humanity, let us find new motivation for living by opening our minds to broader concepts of spirituality.