Journalist Quotes

If Darwin's theory should be true, it will not degrade man; it will simply raise the whole animal world into dignity, leaving man as far in advance as he is at present.

At Car and Driver, we were convinced that the automobile, as we knew and loved it, was as dead as the passenger pigeon. Ralph Nader was at full cry, ringing his tocsin of automobile doom into the brains of the public, convincing them that the lump of chrome and iron in the driveway was as lethal as a dose of Strontium 90 or a blast from a Viet Cong AK-47.

The Iowa caucuses are no more predictive than a gasbag on an ethanol high swaying from a bridge in Madison County.

When did an old white guy yelling at me, telling me what to think become news? What gives him the right to tell me what to think? When was the last time he was in Iraq or Afghanistan or Sri Lanka... or anywhere that didn't have a beach?

It is for us to discharge the high duties that devolve on us, and carry our race onward. To be no better, no wiser, no greater than the past is to be little and foolish and bad; it is to misapply noble means, to sacrifice glorious opportunities for the performance of sublime deeds, to become cumberers of the ground.

William Lloyd Garrison

Remembering is the most overrated thing. Forgetting is far superior.

I want to spend more time with my family, but I'm not sure they want to spend more time with me.

It has long been a source of wonder to me why the leading criminological writers--men like Edmund Lester Pearson, H. B. Irving, Filson Young, Canon Brookes, William Bolitho, and Harold Eaton--have not devoted more space to the Greene tragedy; for here, surely, is one of the outstanding murder mysteries of modern times--a case practically unique in the annals of latter-day crime.

These are my words; this is their world, a world in which we can wear our gender on our sleeves, unabashedly, as we go about the business of thinking out loud.

Journalism has become a sort of competitive screeching: what is trivial but noisy and immediate takes precedence over important matters that develop over time.

What makes the goal of accuracy so vexing for chatbots is that they operate probabilistically when choosing the next word in a sentence; they aren't trying to find the light of truth in a murky world.

Today I arrived by train in New York City, which I'd never seen before, walked through the grandeur of Grand Central Terminal, stepped outside, got my first look at the city and instantly fell in love with it. Silently, inside myself, I yelled: I should have been born here!

Edward Robb Ellis

If they do not give you work, demand bread. If they deny you both, take bread. It is your sacred right!

A person cannot grow up through happiness. Happiness makes a person shallow. It is only through suffering that we grow up, transform, and come to a better understanding of life.

Leslie T. Chang

Our sons and daughters are only passing through.... If we are lucky, they always will consider our home their harbor, but they are headed out to the open sea, almost from the first.

Jacquelyn Mitchard

Movies are more likely than literature to reach deep feelings in people.

If you find yourself despairing about the state of our great country, just think about how unlikely it would have seemed, back in the malaise days of 1979, that Jimmy Carter would one day return to Washington via Reagan Airport.

[On Senator Jesse Helms] I think he ought to be worried about what's going on in the Good Lord's mind, because if there is retributive justice, he'll get AIDS from a transfusion, or one of his grandchildren will.

The generals who had called Zia a mullah behind his back felt ashamed at having underestimated him: not only was he a mullah, he was a mullah whose understanding of religion didn't go beyond parroting what he had heard from the next mullah. A mullah without a beard, a mullah in a four-star general's uniform, a mullah with the instincts of a corrupt tax inspector.

I have all the equipment to be a politician. Total shamelessness. But it's lucky I never ran. In the years from [Joseph] McCarthy to now, I would have either been destroyed or reduced.

The way botanists divide up flowers reminds me of the way Africa was divided into countries by politicians.

Love is a fragile, useless thing. It decomposes easily in the tropic heat.

Dine we must and we may as well dine elegantly as well as wholesomely.

Isabella Beeton

The world of shabby gentility is like no other; its sacrifices have less logic, its standards are harsher, its relation to reality is dimmer than comfortable property or plain poverty can understand.

Can anybody tell me why reporters, in making mention of lady speakers, always consider it to be necessary to report, fully and firstly, the dresses worn by them? When John Jones or Senator Rouser frees his mind in public, we are left in painful ignorance of the color and fit of his pants, coat, necktie and vest - and worse still, the shape of his boots. This seems to me a great omission.