Walter Cronkite Quotations

I want to say that probably 24 hours after I told CBS that I was stepping down at my 65th birthday, I was already regretting it. And I regretted it every day since.

Our job is only to hold up the mirror - to tell and show the public what has happened.

I can't imagine a person becoming a success who doesn't give this game of life everything he's got.

The perils of duck hunting are great- especially for the duck.

Objective journalism and an opinion column are about as similar as the Bible and Playboy magazine.

There is no such thing as a little freedom. Either you are all free, or you are not free.

In seeking truth you have to get both sides of a story.

I think it is absolutely essential in a democracy to have competition in the media, a lot of competition, and we seem to be moving away from that.

I think somebody ought to do a survey as to how many great, important men have quit to spend time with their families who spent any more time with their family. Probably less.

Everything is being compressed into tiny tablets. You take a little pill of news every day-23 minutes-and that's supposed to be enough.

We are not educated well enough to perform the necessary act of intelligently selecting our leaders.

America's health care system is neither healthy, caring, nor a system.

There's a little more ego involved in these jobs than people might realize.

I've gone from the most trusted man in America to one of the most debated.

When you're bringing in a fairly unknown candidate challenging a sitting president, the population needs a lot more information than reduced coverage provides.

The great sadness of my life is that I never achieved the hour newscast, which would not have been twice as good as the half-hour newscast, but many times as good.

Dan Rather and I just aren't especially chummy.

My piece just kind of was another bullet in his rear end.

I think he's terrific. I've always had a great appreciation of his ability. And I would rather like to see him stay on the job there.

It is difficult to think of our craft without him.

We are keeping company, as the old phrase used to be. I'm not making any moves immediately. I don't think it's proper. My wife has only been gone less than a year. I'll wait until that year has passed, at least.

Well thank you very much, I didn't expect birthday greetings from outer space.

To say that we are mired in stalemate seems the only realistic, yet unsatisfactory, conclusion.

Congress & the Presidency in the Television Age.

Errol Flynn died on a 70-foot boat with a 17-year-old girl. Walter has always wanted to go that way, but he's going to have to settle for a 17-footer with a 70-year-old.

The very first day we were there, ... I started getting notes in my box to call this Bernard Shaw.

An incredible reporter and a great writer, but he had a terrible stutter, a terrible stutter.

They're going to have to eat their words. Some of the things I've seen her do on Today when there's breaking news, I thought she's done a fine job. ... Her own journalistic instincts come to the fore.

It's my belief that we should get out now.

I remember her when she was an NBC reporter -- correspondent in Japan -- and I thought she did great work. I haven't watched their morning show that much in late years, but from what I remember then, I can't see how she would lose her ability to be a journalist.

gave the impression of playing a role more than simply trying to deliver the news to the audience.

I don't think any of us saw the long shadow in the newsroom at all.

I don't think those things live forever with the public. They're more likely to live with us journalists than the public itself.

The earliest admonition we had about the computer was to quit using the phrase electric brain. The folks in Philadelphia tried to convince us that the Univac didn't have a brain, and that whatever we fed into it would determine what we got out of it.

I'm a romanticist in many ways. I never get behind the wheel of my boat and dropping the anchor without saying to myself, secretly giving my orders to the crew "All right, lift the anchor, we're on our way to South Hampton. We're gonna beat them there with this load of tea!"

I'm very proud of what Harry Truman turned out to be in office and the record he made. Certainly I think he'll go down in history as one of the greats, because of his conscience, his determination to stick with what he knew was right.

I am not a contemplative type, basically. I am much more of an action person and, as a consequence, I look forward to today and tomorrow and what's breaking.

I sort of think in a way that many of us young reporters who had the opportunity to go overseas for our organizations were kind of, in a sense, war profiteers. We were enhancing our careers while covering that terrible conflict.

I was lucky enough to have one of the first high school classes in the country.

I guess I showed certain signs of being a workaholic in early years; I had a magazine route very early on - I must have been about seven or eight years old or something like that - when I was carrying Liberty magazine, trying to win green and brown coupons; I eventually [won] a pony.

I have never pretended to be a great writer. I am totally immodest about being a great reporter and a good news writer. I write fast and I write accurately, nearly as accurately as anybody can be, and that's my skill.

I am in a position to speak my mind. And that is what I propose to do.

A handful of us determine what will be on the evening news broadcasts, or, for that matter, in the New York Times or Washington Post or Wall Street Journal. Indeed it is a handful of us with this awesome power.And those [news stories] available to us already have been culled and re-culled by persons far outside our control.

I'd like to be a song and dance man.

For nearly five decades the World Federalists have worked to promote a strengthened UN and more effective institutions of global governance. I offer my personal endorsement. Now a great opportunity has opened for the realization of the dreams of the UN's founders.

We know that no one should tell a woman she has to bear an unwanted child. We know that religious beliefs cannot define patriotism.

This opens the door on another chapter of history.

In all my years as a news commentator I was never once, able to tell the truth, about anything.

The daily coverage of the Vietnamese battlefield helped convince the American public that the carnage was not worth the candle.

I'm still ready to go to the moon, if they'll take me.

Old anchormen, you see, don't fade away. They just keep coming back for more. And that's the way it is, Friday, March 6, 1981.

We must strengthen the United Nations as a first step toward a World Government, patterned after our Own Government with a legislature, executive and judiciary and police.

A system of world order-preferably a system of world government -is mandatory... The proud nations someday will see the light and, for the common good and their own survival, yield up their precious sovereignty...

Television [is] a high-impact medium. It does some things no other force can do-transmitting electronic pictures through the air. Still, as an explored, comprehensive medium, it is not a substitute for print.

Justice was born outside the home and a long way from it; and it has never been adopted there

Reagan was an exceedingly likeable guy, just a heck of a nice fellow, despite his politics. He was funny and loved a good joke, the dirtier, I'm afraid the more ethnic, the better. I don't think he brought very much to the presidency, except charisma and success.

I think most newspapermen by definition have to be liberal; if they're not liberal, by definition of it, then they can hardly be good newspapermen. If they're preordained dogmatists for a cause, then they can't be very good journalists.

Never before probably has the need for interfaith commitment been nearly as great as it is at this very moment.

The ruling class is the rich. . . . And those people are so able to manipulate our democracy that they really control the democracy.

Pat Robertson has written in a book a few years ago that we should have a world government, but only when the Messiah arrives. He wrote, literally, any attempt to achieve world order before that time must be the work of the Devil. Well join me - I’m glad to sit here at the right hand of Satan.

Freedom of the press is not just important to democracy, it is democracy.

It is clear that military force and our policy of preemption are alone insufficient to make us safe. But help is on the way. Legislation has been proposed to create a US Department of Peace. In the propsed Department of Peace it would organize our present system into one conscious effort to improve humanity in achieving peace, where true safety lies.

Terrible, it was terrible. Even today and it's been several months now you just bring it up and I tear up a little bit, terribly. You know when you're that close that long and got along as well as we did, we seldom had any serious arguments. We might have - might discuss which movie we wanted to see and what play we wanted to go to, where we ought to go for a vacation but that usually didn't last very long because we were much of the same mind all the time.

The fact that you are here tonight gathered together with us testifies to the fact you understand the need for this organization and the need for redoubling our efforts in this organization to try to assure that democracy as represented by the United States must depend upon a total freedom of religion, which is written into our Constitution, of course, and the mere suggestion that anyone could maintain that one's patriotism, one's devotion to one's country can be judged by one's religion is so vile, so vile that we have to take to the streets indeed and to put it aside.

It seems to rise again when the crisis times come, and this is a time of most severe crisis, as we all know, not just for the history of the United States and the survival indeed of our democracy, but for the future peace of the world. And never before probably has the need for interfaith commitment been nearly as great as it is at this very moment.

There is a compulsion that is perhaps the heart of life's meanings, this marvelous mystery of blood ties that brings joy whenever a new family member comes on the scene.

I think he [composer Joe Raposo] was the first man who kissed me on the cheek.

I asked [my doctors] if I'd be able to play singles tennis and they said I could. That made me very happy since I haven't played in five years.

Attorney General John Ashcroft has earned himself a remarkable distinction as the Torquemada of American law. Tomás de Torquemada...was largely responsible for...[the] torture and the burning of heretics — Muslims in particular. Now, of course, I am not accusing the Attorney General of pulling out anyone's fingernails or burning people at the stake (at least I don't know of any such cases). But one does get the sense these days that the old Spaniard's spirit is comfortably at home in Ashcroft's Department of Justice.

We've always known you can gain circulation or viewers by cheapening the product, and now you're finding the bad driving out the good.

If we are to avoid that catastrophe [a nuclear World War III], a system of world order — preferably a system of world government — is mandatory. The proud nations someday will see the light and, for the common good and their own survival, yield up their precious sovereignty, just as America's thirteen colonies did two centuries ago. When we finally come to our senses and establish a world executive and parliament of nations, thanks to the Nuremburg precedent we will already have in place the fundamentals for the third branch of government, the judiciary.

News reporters are certainly liberal and left of center.

The first priority of humankind in this era is to establish an effective system of world law that will assure peace with justice among the peoples of the world.

When the Eagle landed on the moon, I was speechless—overwhelmed, like most of the world. Couldn't say a word. I think all I said was, 'Wow! Jeez!' Not exactly immortal. Well, I was nothing if not human.

To suggest we are on the edge of defeat is to yield to unreasonable pessimism. To say that we are mired in stalemate seems the only realistic, yet unsatisfactory, conclusion. ... It is increasingly clear to this reporter that the only rational way out then will be to negotiate, not as victors, but as an honorable people who lived up to their pledge to defend democracy, and did the best they could.

Be kind to an old man.

I grew my mustache when I was nineteen in order to look older. I never shaved it off even though it overran its usefulness many, many years ago. Once you get started in television, people associate you with your physical appearance - and that includes the mustache. So I can't shave it off now. If I did, I'd have to answer too much mail.

For many years, I did my best to report on the issues of the day in as objective a manner as possible. When I had my own strong opinions, as I often did, I tried not to communicate them to my audience.

For how many thousands of years now have we humans been what we insist on calling "civilized?" And yet, in total contradiction, we also persist in the savage belief that we must occasionally, at least, settle our arguments by killing one another.

The sweet smell of the South, of Camellias and Azaleas, clings to Beaufort's ancient and historic buildings.

We're living in a state where no one can trust his telephone conversations, nor even his personal conversations in a room, in a bar or anywhere else.

Let us hear the peal of a new international liberty bell that calls us all to the creation of a system of enforceable world law in which the universal desire for peace can place its hope and prayers.

The 60s undoubtedly were the most turbulent years of the century.

Putting it as strongly as I can, the failure to give free airtime for our political campaigns endangers our democracy.

The battle for the airwaves cannot be limited to only those who have the bank accounts to pay for the battle and win it.

We cannot defer this responsibility to posterity. Time will not wait.

So now the question is, basically, right now, how will the Osama Bin Laden tape affect the election? And I have a feeling that it could tilt the election a bit. In fact, I'm a little inclined to think that Karl Rove, the political manager at the White House, who is a very clever man, that he probably set up bin Laden to this thing.

I don't think people ought to believe only one news medium. They ought to read and they ought to go to opinion journals and all the rest of it. I think it's terribly important that this be taught in the public schools, because otherwise, we're gonna get to a situation because of economic pressures and other things where television's all you've got left. And that would be disastrous. We can't cover the news in a half-hour event evening. That's ridiculous.

Probably the most important single element that I found in my own marriage was a sense of humor. My wife had a delicious sense of humor, and I think I have an adequate one.

Everybody knows that there's a liberal, that there's a heavy liberal persuasion among correspondents.

We are on the precipice of being so ignorant that our democracy is threatened.

Television... is not a substitute for print.

Not only do we have a right to know, we have a duty to know what our Government is doing in our name.

I am a news presenter, a news broadcaster, an anchorman, a managing editor - not a commentator or analyst. I feel no compulsion to be a pundit.

I think that being liberal, in the true sense, is being nondoctrinaire, nondogmatic, noncomitted to a cause but examining each case on its merits. Being left of center is another thing; it's a political position. I think most newspapermen by definition have to be liberal; if they're not liberal, by my definition of it, then they can hardly be good newspapermen.

We've got a great percentage of our population that, to our great shame, either cannot or, equally unfortunate, will not read. And that portion of our public is growing. Those people are suckers for the demagogue.

It seems to many of us that if we are to avoid the eventual catastrophic world conflict we must strengthen the United Nations as a first step toward a world government patterned after our own government with a legislature, executive and judiciary, and police to enforce its international laws and keep the peace ... To do that, of course, we Americans will have to yield up some of our sovereignty. That would be a bitter pill. It would take a lot of courage, a lot of faith in the new order.

Our task is not to tell the truth; we are opinion molders.

When Moses was alive, these pyramids were a thousand years old. Here began the history of architecture. Here people learned to measure time by a calendar, to plot the stars by astronomy and chart the earth by geometry. And here they developed that most awesome of all ideas - the idea of eternity.

People who understand music hear sounds that no one else makes when Frank Sinatra sings.