David Brinkley Quotations

A successful man is one who can lay a firm foundation with the bricks others have thrown at him.

Being an anchor is not just a matter of sitting in front of a camera and looking pretty.

Numerous politicians have seized absolute power and muzzled the press. Never in history has the press seized absolute power and muzzled the politicians.

People have the illusion that all over the world, all the time, all kinds of fantastic things are happening. When in fact, over most of the world, most of the time, nothing is happening.

I'm not a very good advertisement for the American school system.

The only way to do news on television is not to be terrified of it.

This is the first convention of the space age - where a candidate can promise the moon and mean it.

The one function that TV news performs very well is that when there is no news we give it to you with the same emphasis as if it were.

Washington, D.C. is a city filled with people who believe they are important.

In the nineteenth century, government agencies in Washington had, almost without exception, flatly refused to hire even one female.

Washington is a pool of money surrounded by people who want some.

In the forties [1940s] in Washington it was still unusual for a rich and socially well-connected married woman to work. If she did, her husband was assumed by his peers to be unable to support a household on his own and somehow to be inadequate.

Nobody in TV makes as much money as Robert Redford, who likes to make movies for several million dollars only on the condition that they contain some sort of social message. I cannot take very seriously a social message delivered by an actor who is paid nine million dollars to deliver it, and who charges you five dollars to see it.

Maybe the French will get a manned craft into space if they can get a rocket strong enough to lift a bottle of wine.

We can look forward to four more years of wonderful, inspirational speeches full of wit, poetry, music, love and affection, plus more goddamn nonsense.

She took a leap of faith and grew her wings on the way down.

By early 1943, the Pentagon was complete-a building big enough to house forty thousand people and all their accoutrements, the largest building in the world, conceived, funded, designed and constructed in a little more than a year. And on the day it was finished, it was already too small.

Laughter is a unique medicine that places your problems in perspective, relaxes your tense muscles, reassures those around you, and helps you to enjoy life even when you don't have everything you want. A successful man is one who can lay a firm foundation with the bricks others have thrown at him.

That's what I like to do. That's the only thing I'm any good at, ... Larry King Live.

Washington, D.C. is a city filled with people who believe they are important.

After a long day election day, and seven hours on the set, what I said at the end of election night coverage was both impolite and unfair, and I'm sorry. I regret it.

If I were objective or if you were objective or if anyone was, he would have to be put away somewhere in an institution because he'd be some sort of vegetable.