Linda Ellerbee Quotations

People are pretty much alike. It's only that our differences are more susceptible to definition than our similarities.

If you believe in your heart that you are right, you must fight with all your might to do it your way. Only dead fish swim with the stream all the time.

If men can run the world, why can't they stop wearing neckties? How intelligent is it to start the day by tying a little noose around your neck?

I have always felt that laughter in the face of reality is probably the finest sound there is and will last until the day when the game is called on account of darkness. In this world, a good time to laugh is any time you can.

I think laughter may be a form of courage. As humans we sometimes stand tall and look into the sun and laugh, and I think we are never more brave than when we do that.

When the anchorman is wearing a colonel's uniform, it tells you something.

We are heading in a lot of dangerous ways. The Chinese character for danger is also for opportunity, so it's not necessarily bad. It's just that as journalists, I believe we have to pay particular attention here.

We call them Twinkies. You've seen them on television acting the news, modeling and fracturing the news while you wonder whether they've read the news - or if they've blow-dried their brains, too.

Anybody who tries to sabotage Katie had better be well-armed, because she is the 500-pound gorilla. She's not somebody who is sitting next to Dan (Rather) or sitting next to Harry (Reasoner). ... She is the anchor of the CBS Evening News , and you sabotage her at your peril.

How is it that so often . . . I get the feeling I've worked hard to learn something I already know, or knew, once.

A few weeks after my surgery, I went out to play catch with my golden retriever. When I bent over to pick up the ball, my prosthesis fell out. The dog snatched it, and I found myself chasing him down the road yelling "Hey, come back here with my breast!"

I am not for abortion; nobody is for abortion. I am for your right to make your own hard choices in this world.

Pitching was about fooling people, manipulating them, making them believe in something that ultimately wasn't there. Great pitching was great lying.

co-dependence...taking someone else's temperature to see how you feel ...

Some of the qualities that go into making a good reporter - aggressiveness, a certain sneakiness, a secretive nature, nosiness, the ability to find out that which someone wants hidden, the inability to take 'no' with any sort of grace, a taste for gossip, rudeness, a fair disdain for what people will think of you and an occasional and calculated disregard for rules - are also qualities that go into making a very antisocial human being.

I've heard it said that the first law of journalism is to confirm existing prejudice, rather than contradict it.

Just because it's a rat race doesn't mean it's okay to be a rat.

if you don't want to get old, don't mellow.

Presumably a movement is more polite than a revolution, and a lot slower.

Putting people in a room and strapping wires to their wrist to find out if I make them tingle when I'm telling them about Beirut is a long way from Edward R. Murrow.

We tried to do the news without frills, without fluffy hairdos, without graphics. It does say something about our business that is not very pretty. It didn't matter how good the show was. What counted was money.

There is a gentle absurdity about Washington, D.C., and it is easy to develop affection for the place, if you can forget that the consequences of what goes on there are real, whereas what goes on there may not be.

I was raised by and have raised people who regard telling one story when two would do as a sign someone is not really trying.

The whole town looks as if it had been left out in the rain too long and by mistake.

It's not brain surgery. It's not nuclear physics. It's television. It's only television.

I think laughter may be a form of courage.

Change, like youth, is purely wasted on the young.

Some of my colleagues want to be The Anchorman on the Mount. Others see themselves as the Ace Reporter. Because of 60 Minutes, there's a whole herd of them determined to be The Grand Inquisitor and a heady number want only to be The Friendliest Anchor on the Block. At least one wants to be Jesus.

Only dead fish swim with the stream all of the time....

It's not just the cheerleading thing I have a problem with, it's the whole jock enchilada. I'm all for a good game of basketball in teh driveway or a killer bike ride. But when there's tackling and grunting involved-- no thanks.

Always remember to set a place at the table of life for the unexpected guest.

There are two types of change: the change we choose and the change that chooses us.

I believe in tomorrow and I will be part of it.

'These boat people,' says the government of Hong Kong, 'they all want to go to America.' Well, I swear I don't know why, do you? I mean, take Vietnam. Why would any Vietnamese come to America after what American did to Vietnam? Don't they remember My Lai, napalm, Sylvester Stallone?

Dreck is dreck and no amount of fancy polish is going to make it anything else.

Time doesn't go. Time stays. We go.

The new national campfire - radio.

Styles, like everything else, change. Style doesn't.

The best time to laugh is anytime you can.

Like Nietzsche, I believe that without music, life would be a mistake. Nothing but silence says it better.

in television the product is not the program; the product is the audience and the consumer of that product is the advertiser. The advertiser does not 'buy' a news program. He buys an audience.

I think laughter may be a form of courage As humans we sometimes stand tall and look into the sun and laugh, and I think we are never more brave than when we do that.

What I like most about change is that it's a synonym for 'hope'. If you're taking a risk, what you are really saying is, 'I believe in tomorrow and I will be the part of it.

We plant a tree that won't be big enough to climb until we're too old to climb trees, we write constitutions to protect the rights of people who won't be born for another hundred years and may not be worth the trouble anyway, and we try to take care of our sick, though we all suffer from a disease for which there is no cure and no hope for one. We will not last and we know we will not - and still we write, carve, build, paint and plant to last. We are, it seems to me, very, very brave.

A good time to laugh is any time you can.

[My father] was generous with his affection, given to great, awkward, engulfing hugs, and I can remember so clearly the smell of his hugs, all starched shirt, tobacco, Old Spice, and Cutty Sark. Sometimes I think I've never been properly hugged since.

When there is good news, and it is news , we do report it, but usually news is a record of human failure. Those wanting to celebrate human accomplishment are, as someone said, advised to go to the sports section.

I want to know why, if men rule the world, they don't stop wearing neckties.

Media literacy is not just important, it's absolutely critical. It's going to make the difference between whether kids are a tool of the mass media or whether the mass media is a tool for kids to use.

In the coldest February, as in every other month in every other year, the best thing to hold on to in this world is each other.