American Journalist Quotes

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

Money is a metaphor and a reality. It provides choices but demands self-knowledge from us: We must decide what we are willing or unwilling to do for money.

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.

In many respects, we now live in a society that is only formally democratic, as the great mass of citizens have minimal say on the major public issues of the day, and such issues are scarcely debated at all in any meaningful sense in the electoral arena. In our society, corporations and the wealthy enjoy a power every bit as immense as that assumed to have been enjoyed by the lords and royalty of feudal times.

Robert W. McChesney

Racism is not about hurtful words, bruised feelings, political correctness, or refusing to call short people 'vertically challenged.' Racism is about the power to treat entire groups of people as something less than human—for the benefit of that power. That's why a Native American sports mascot is far from harmless.

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?

I don't particularly like South Korean literature.

Brian Reynolds Myers

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.

But no one can praise Roosevelt for doing this and then insist that he restored our traditional political and economic systems to their former vitality.

The only reason to invest in the market is because you think you know something others don't.

R. Foster Winans

I do not believe — and I have never believed — that the crack cocaine explosion was a conscious CIA conspiracy, or anybody's conspiracy, to decimate black America. I've never believed that South Central Los Angeles was targeted by the U.S. government to become the crack capitol of the world. But that isn't to say that the CIA's hands or the U.S. government's hands are clean in this matter. Actually, far from it. After spending three years of my life looking into this, I am more convinced than ever that the U.S. government's responsibility for the drug problems in South Central Los Angeles and other inner cities is greater than I ever wrote in the newspaper.

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.

Resilience is a precious skill. People who have it tend to also have three underlying advantages: a believe that they can influence life events; a tendency to find meaningful purpose in life's turmoil; and a conviction that they can learn from both positive and negative experiences.

The simplest strategy for bouts of noxious flatus is to not care. Or perhaps to take advantage of a gastroenterologist I know: get a dog. (To blame.)

Despite the array of groups and organizations working on global warming, we are still missing a key element: the movement. Along with the hard work of not-for-profit lobbyists, environmental lawyers, green economists, sustainability-minded engineers, and forward-thinking entrepreneurs, it's going to take the inspired political involvement of millions of Americans to get our country on track to solving this problem.

The emergence of intelligence, I am convinced, tends to unbalance the ecology. In other words intelligence is the great polluter. It is not until a creature begins to manage its environment that nature is thrown into disorder.

Clifford D. Simak

Here we have drug that is not like opium. Opium has all of the good of Dr. Jekyll and all the evil of Mr. Hyde. This drug is entirely the monster Hyde, the harmful effect of which cannot be measured. Some people will fly into a delirious rage, and they are temporarily irresponsible and may commit violent crimes. Other people will laugh uncontrollably. It is impossible to say what the effect will be on any individual. Those research men who have tried it have always been under control. They have always insisted upon that. … It is dangerous to the mind and body, and particularly dangerous to the criminal type, because it releases all of the inhibitions.

Harry J. Anslinger

Psychologist Philip Tetlock (following the lead of Isaiah Berlin), divided the world of political forecasters into hedgehogs and foxes.

Cultivate night-blooming jasmine near your bedroom window, and dream of men you've always longed for.

I do not know how Vladimir Putin will be esteemed by the future history, but I have no doubt that among his successes and advantages for Russia historians shall absolutely note the fact of his not altering the constitution, for he created a precedent. And afterwards, no matter who might become president, it shall be extremely difficult to alter the constitution exactly on that point. Extremely difficult.

Vladimir Posner

If your subject is an actor, he or she will also be shorter in person than they appear onscreen. This, also, you must keep to yourself. Even if you think you are giving their lack of height a positive spin, you aren't. 'You always seem larger than life in photos, but it's nice to see that in person you're just like us' might seem like a compliment, but what a star hears is 'You're stumpy, and you will lose jobs to taller people.

In the mud of the Cambrian main Did our earliest ancestor dive: From a shapeless albuminous grain We mortals our being derive. He could split himself up into five, Or roll himself round like a ball; For the fittest will always survive, While the weakliest go to the wall.

Simply getting a country's population online is not going to trigger a revolution in critical thinking.

If we had had the right technology back then, you would have seen Eva Braun on the Donahue show and Adolf Hitler on Meet the Press.

Ed Turner (television executive)

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