Edward R. Murrow Quotes

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

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

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-that's show business.

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.

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.

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 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.