Judy Woodruff Quotations

We're interested in knowing, ... how much each one of you uses the Internet. How much time do you spend on it?

The fact that she's the first African-American woman to be named not only to be national security advisor, but to go on to be named secretary of state -- she's already made history from that standpoint. Second woman to be named secretary of state, first African-American woman to be named secretary of state.

Oops, I only have so many days left.

Our objective is to create a profile of the next generation, and to provide current decision-makers with better information about them. We want to help everyone understand the views of young people.

I think one hallmark of her first term in the Senate is her desire to work across the aisle with Republicans on some initiatives. She may make history again if she runs for the presidency. Whether she wins or not, as a former first lady, that will also be history-making.

The rap on Dean is that the Burlington Birkenstock crowd, people who put Dean signs in bars called the Red Square, can't take their man to the White House, that he's just too far left.

There have been trade-offs every day, every month, every year. There's a lot that I missed and I do have regrets in that area. But I have been able to bring to my family the richness of being a journalist.

Why should we be part of a force going into a country where there has been complete lawlessness? Why should we put the lives of our soldiers on the line in order to restore order in a country where there is none?

Falling Up: How a Redneck Helped Invent Political Consulting.

I've never seen Washington as divided as we are right now.

No, we didn't have unrealistic expectations. We expected them to put up some fight.

this is such a limited amount of time, I have the potential to make change.

This is truly an attempt to understand where young people are coming from today. I think it's fascinating where this generation is coming from.

They're challenging. They're probing. They don't take anything at face value. I don't know what they're going to ask. I'm somebody who likes to be prepared.

As some House Republicans tell it, their vote today to change party rules was not just about protecting Tom DeLay. They say it was about taking power away from a Democratic prosecutor who they believe may be eager to indict their majority leader.

Dad was also a deeply unabashedly religious man.

After the midterm elections, Karl jumped from being prime minister to king.

That's a sharp contrast to Gore's 'People v. Powerful Business,' delivered last week on Capitol Hill, ... is in the hands of an elite, which embodies wealth and power and represents them at the expense of citizens.

If honesty is the best policy, surely Michigan's accurately described, fully disclosed college affirmative action program is preferable to achieving similar numbers through winks, nods and disguises.

I think there's a fundamental moral issue about whether it's right for a machine to decide to kill a person. It's bad enough that people are deciding to kill people, but at least they have perhaps some moral argument that they're doing it to ultimately defend their families or prevent some greater evil.

One of the main things we have been looking at is, how can we get a robot to think about situations it's never seen before?

People want jobs, but nobody has a recipe for how to get them. And so they are trying different things.

The field of artificial intelligence is pushing new boundaries.

Machines are on track to be on par with human intelligence in less than 15 years.

The primary implication is that we're going to combine our intelligence with computers. We're going to make ourselves smarter. By the 2030s, they will literally go inside our bodies and inside our brains.

From one perspective, we're in the early stage in artificial intelligence, but exponentials start out slowly, and then they take off.

Raising children is a journey generously sprinkled with what many view as teachable moments, perhaps none as challenging as those surrounding faith and religion.

In my book ["Reclaiming Conversation: The Power of Talk in a Digital Age], I argue that we're vulnerable to technologies.There's a 40 percent decline in all markers for empathy among college students, with most of it taking place in the past years.

It's very typical that when two people are having lunch, they put a phone on the table between them.

All the research shows that the presence of that phone will do two things to the conversation. It will make the conversation go to trivial matters, and it will decrease the amount of empathy that the two people in the conversation feel toward each other. That phone is a signal that either of us can put our attention elsewhere.

A.I. poses a potential threat more dangerous than nuclear weapons.

You may not realize it, but artificial intelligence is all around us.

I think that Election Day is the closest thing we have to a civic sacrament, when people meet their neighbors at the firehouse or the school and they vote at the same time.

I think it's important that campaigns be aired all the way through, that people aren't voting three weeks before, before debates are held.

Now it's become sort of a - you know, just sort of a casual thing, and you can vote any time at all. It doesn't increase turnout. It hasn't increased turnout, really. And I don't think it's a healthy development. I sound like an old fogey here.

Election Day now has become the last day to vote.

Senate races are different from House races, in the sense that they are more candidate-driven. The higher the office - that is, I mean, governor, senator, president - the more important the candidate.

AFSCME stands for the American Federation of State, County and Municipal Employees.

I think we have reached such saturation levels, the money at this point doesn't swing election.

There's no embassy for the United States in Iran. So, Iranians process those in other countries.

A definitive decision to say you should start people on therapy as soon as you know they're infected.

CD4 being the level of the lymphocyte that indicates the level of your immune function.

Our phones do play to our natural nervousness about being vulnerable to each other, but that doesn't mean that we can't we can't pull ourselves together, and say - we need to talk to each because it's in conversation, the most human and humanizing thing that we do, that empathy is born, that intimacy is born, that relationship is born.

In the study, 89 percent of Americans said that they interrupted their last social encounter by looking at a phone. And 82 percent of them said that it deteriorated the conversation.

I think that, from Vaclav Havel own experience, he knew if we all paid attention to what was going on, the chances were that even the most horrible dictators wouldn't execute people.

Vaclav Havel was a really popular leader. He couldn't believe that he was really there. I mean, he still dressed in black T-shirts and jeans and was very kind of '60s. And he began to realize the seriousness of it. And he knew how to strategize. And he had a very keen political sense, but he didn't want to be like the old communist leaders.

Vaclav Havel didn't want to ride around in big black cars. And he had his own car with a little red heart on it. And he loved to go out and talk to the people.

Vaclav Havel had this great sense of humor. And you kind of felt that he was making a little bit fun of everything at the same time.

He [Vaclav Havel] did love music. And so much about the Czech revolution was about music.

I think he [Vaclav Havel] is one of the great figures of the 20th century. He is one of the people that was able to be a part of overthrowing a dictatorial system by talking to people and understanding what the elements of democracy really are and respect for each other and elevating.

Vaclav Havel had moral stature. The president in first Czechoslovakia and the Czech Republic in many ways is a ceremonial role. And so, speaking out and having that strong moral fiber, people just knew that he told the truth to people who had only heard lies. And so I think his - that's his legacy.

I think he [Vaclav Havel] felt that he could speak more truth, in a way, through writing plays.

I don't think anyone is closer to the voters in Washington than members of the House of Representatives.

The system was afraid of Vaclav Havel. And so they either harassed him for put him in jail.

I knew that Vaclav Havel didn't want to look into people's eyes, because he said that, when he was being interrogated during the communist period and had been taken to jail, that, if you look directly into somebody's eyes, they can persuade you. And so you can see that so clearly in this interview, where he's looking down.And I kept saying to him as we kept coming - came over here: " You have to look up."And I clearly had no influence on him.

Vaclav Havel was the most amazing man in terms of being the combination of somebody with massive moral authority, great courage for having espoused the concepts of democracy, freedom throughout a very difficult communist period, a very modest man, and somebody with a fabulous sense of humor and the idea of being able to see the absurd in situations.

If you're using technology in a way that opens out conversation in your family, with your friends, with people you care about, I'm for that. But if you're using technology to silence the conversations with the people around you, then you have to create sacred spaces in your home, the kitchen, the dining room, the car.

At work, conversation increases productivity. And yet people go into work, put on their headphones. In one interview, somebody called it - they become pilots in their own cockpits.

People put on their earphones, they lay out their phones, they put - open up their computers, and they convince themselves that they're most productive when they're focused on their e-mail, when, really, they're ignoring the cafeteria, the watercooler, the meetings with colleagues, the times when really the creativity, collaboration happens.

Create sacred spaces in the workplace as well. Classrooms, five years ago, professors would say, I don't want be a nanny to my students. They can do whatever they want. Now professors are saying, put away that laptop, because studies show that it not only takes away the attention of the person who's on the laptop from the class, but everyone around them. There's like a circle around that person that's distracted and not paying attention.

Young people realize that something is amiss. There's a generation that fell in love with their phones, and it's very hard for them to see that there's a problem. But young people are desperate for the attention of their parents, who are really not paying attention to them.

That's one of the surprises in the research, that's it's not young people who are smitten with their phones. It's their parents who are not paying attention to them.

I have no doubt about it. I think this is a part of the nature of man, a desire for freedom, for dignified life.

Of course, man is also a weak creature with many bad qualities. And it depends on which of his qualities will in a certain social situation and in a certain climate prevail, which qualities will awaken. The totalitarian system was masterful in how it managed to mobilize all the bad qualities.

This is naturally the most important thing, the dark traces left by the era of totalitarianism in the human mind, where is - are difficult to do away with. And this is a very demanding job.

We decided to focus on women because no one was singling them out.

As the mother of a son with disabilities, I try to keep an eye out for news that affects people in the large community of which he is a part.

My younger sister retired a few years ago after a 30-year career teaching history and social studies at an inner-city high school.

As the mother of a grown son with a traumatic brain injury, I couldn't be more excited about the prospect of finding out how to repair even a small part of the damage that changed his life.

Girl Scouts offered a wonderful group of girls where common concerns and interests could come together. We could learn, be challenged, and support one another. It was a very positive aspect of my life and played an important role in shaping who I am today.

Politics is in my blood. I'd love to be involved in 2008, maybe even '06.

So many times, white - non-college-education - educated white males have voted Republican. They voted against their own economic interests because of guns, because of gays, and because of God, the three G's, God being the woman's right to choose.

It's always unfortunate when a reporter is sent behind bars for failing to turn over sources. There's no way to say what the long-term outcome will be.

Every news organization should ideally be as broadly representative as possible.

Americans tend not to be too enthusiastic about having their taxes raised again....But if the American people aren't going to accept it, if the politicians don't have the courage to raise taxes, what are we facing down the road?

In 2008, the Democrats made a great effort among African-American voters, and they did increase their turnout considerably, and among Latino voters.

Some days you feel like you've had the greatest ego massage, then the next day you've been trampled on.

When I think of grass I think of something to walk on, pot as something to put a plant in.

If you spend enough time in or around Washington, you'll meet amazing people who work for the government.

Historically, when times are bad, voters, especially in the Industrial Midwest, have turned to the Democrats.

My mother was adored by her family and by the scores of children she took care of and their parents, all of whom called her 'Miss Woody.

You can find inspiration when you're not even looking for it.

He was a lifelong Republican, but over the years, Harry Blackmun built a reputation as a liberal, sometimes defiant Justice, whose fierce protection of individual rights led some to anoint him the moral conscience of the court.

I think he [Vaclav Havel] probably would have liked to have written more plays. I think he missed being a playwright.I think he talked about wanting to write plays and keep appealing to people through that medium, rather than politics.

For the past 21 years, I've been privileged to be part of an amazing organization called the International Women's Media Foundation.

And I've been incredibly lucky to have a long career in journalism that has given me a front-row seat to some of the most important moments in modern American political life.

Is this administration, the Clinton administration, an administration that needed defending?

My job is to try and bring attention to places that don't have it

If image is everything, how can the Democratic presidential hopefuls compete with a President fresh from a war victory.

But I want to pay tribute to Anna Lee Woodruff, an extraordinary, selfless woman and beautiful grandmother who in her quiet determined way was a role model for her two daughters, and who left a lasting impression on so many who knew her.

There are many things we can live without but a sense of humor is not one of them!