Walter Cronkite famous quotes

I am neither Republican nor Democrat. I am a registered independent because I find that I cast my votes not on the basis of party loyalty but on the issues of the moment and my assessment of the candidates.
-- Walter Cronkite

#Loyalty #Party #Independent

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.
-- Walter Cronkite

#Writing #Skills #News

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

#Freedom #4th Of July #Littles

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.
-- Walter Cronkite

#Today #Looks #Tomorrow

We are the lucky generation. We first broke our earthly bonds and ventured into space. From our descendants- perches on other planets or distant space cities, they will look back at our achievement with wonder at our courage and audacity and with appreciation at our accomplishments, which assured the future in which they live.
-- Walter Cronkite

#Appreciation #Moon #Cities

Leaving San Francisco is like saying goodbye to an old sweetheart. You want to linger as long as possible.
-- Walter Cronkite

#Goodbye #San Francisco #Long

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

#Truth #Two Sides #Stories

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

#Health #Caring #America

Whatever the cost of our libraries, the price is cheap compared to that of an ignorant nation.
-- Walter Cronkite

#Inspirational #Education #Ignorant

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

#Tasks #Opinion #Telling The Truth

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.
-- Walter Cronkite

#Moving #Thinking #Media

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

#Hunting #Ducks #Duck Hunting

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

#Jobs #Mirrors #Shows

Success is more permanent when you achieve it without destroying your principles.
-- Walter Cronkite

#Success #Principles #Achieve

Those advocates who work for world peace by urging a system of world government are called impractical dreamers. Those impractical dreamers are entitled to ask their critics what is so practical about war.
-- Walter Cronkite

#War #Government #Dreamer

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

#People #Sound #Frank

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.
-- Walter Cronkite

#New York #Wall #Stories

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

#Song #Men

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.
-- Walter Cronkite

#Littles #Tablets #Tiny

And that's the way it is.
-- Walter Cronkite

#Way #Journalism

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

#Leader #Enough #Educated

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.
-- Walter Cronkite

#Air #Impact #Television

Everybody knows that there's a liberal, that there's a heavy liberal persuasion among correspondents.....Anybody who has to live with the people, who covers police stations, covers county courts, brought up that way, has to have a degree of humanity that people who do not have that exposure don't have, and some people interpret that to be liberal. It's not a liberal, it's humanitarian and that's a vastly different thing.
-- Walter Cronkite

#People #Police #Humanity

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

#Kissing #Men #Thinking

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.
-- Walter Cronkite

#Heart #Blood #Ties

The profession of journalism ought to be about telling people what they need to know - not what they want to know.
-- Walter Cronkite

#People #Needs #Want

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.
-- Walter Cronkite

#Workout #Sadness #Half

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

#Commitment #Needs #Moments

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

#Freedom #Years #Able

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.
-- Walter Cronkite

#Anchorman #Friday #Justice

It is a seldom proffered argument as to the advantages of a free press that it has a major function in keeping the government itself informed as to what the government is doing.
-- Walter Cronkite

#Government #Argument #Function

It is not the reporter's job to be a patriot or to presume to determine where patriotism lies. His job is to relate the facts.
-- Walter Cronkite

#Jobs #Lying #Patriotism

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.
-- Walter Cronkite

#Stars #Years #Ideas

Be kind to an old man.
-- Walter Cronkite

#Men #Be Kind #Aging

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.
-- Walter Cronkite

#Thinking #Political #Definitions

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

#Class #People #Political

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

#Challenges #President #Sitting

Not only do we have a right to know, we have a duty to know what our Government is doing in our name. If there's a criticism to be made today, it's that the press isn't doing enough to put the pressure on the government to provide information.
-- Walter Cronkite

#Media #Names #Government

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

#Politics #Persuasion #Heavy

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

#Objectivity #Magazines #Opinion

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

#Inspirational #Moon #Ready

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

#Home #Justice #Long

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...
-- Walter Cronkite

#Government #Order #Yield

News reporters are certainly liberal and left of center.
-- Walter Cronkite

#News

Dan Rather and I just aren't especially chummy.
-- Walter Cronkite

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.
-- Walter Cronkite

#Law #Justice #Priorities

It seems now more certain than ever that the bloody experience of Vietnam is to end in a stalemate,
-- Walter Cronkite

#Vietnam #Stalemate #Certain

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.
-- Walter Cronkite

#Thinking #Moon #Eagles

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.
-- Walter Cronkite

#Yield #People #Democracy

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.
-- Walter Cronkite

#Years #Play #Doctors

I am dumbfounded that there hasn't been a crackdown with the libel and slander laws on some of these would-be writers and reporters on the Internet.
-- Walter Cronkite

#Law #Would Be #Internet

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.
-- Walter Cronkite

#Birthday #Regret #Want

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.
-- Walter Cronkite

#Love You #Men #Thinking

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.
-- Walter Cronkite

#God #Country #Organization

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.
-- Walter Cronkite

#Military #Lying #Safety

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

#Democracy #Important #Censorship

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

#Men #America #Gone

If that is what makes us liberals, so be it, just as long as in reporting the news we adhere to the first ideals of good journalism -- that news reports must be fair, accurate and unbiased.
-- Walter Cronkite

#Long #Unbiased #Firsts

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.
-- Walter Cronkite

#Home #Law #People

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.
-- Walter Cronkite

#Government #Police #Historical

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.
-- Walter Cronkite

#God #Commitment #Survival

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.
-- Walter Cronkite

#Book #Hands #Order

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.
-- Walter Cronkite

#Gains #Driving #Circulation

Ethics must be reintroduced to public service to restore people's faith in government. Without such faith, democracy cannot flourish. Your ambitious agenda is filling a desperate need.
-- Walter Cronkite

#Integrity #Government #People

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.
-- Walter Cronkite

#War #Yield #Light

To say that we are closer to victory today is to believe, in the face of the evidence, the optimists who have been wrong in the past,
-- Walter Cronkite

#Believe #Past #Victory

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.
-- Walter Cronkite

#Love You #Vacation #Play

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.
-- Walter Cronkite

#Modern Life #Rooms #Telephones

The invasion of Iraq was illegal from the start.
-- Walter Cronkite

#Iraq #Politics #Invasion

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

#Religious #Children #Atheism

This opens the door on another chapter of history.
-- Walter Cronkite

#Doors #Chapters

As anchorman of the CBS Evening News, I signed off my nightly broadcasts for nearly two decades with a simple statement: "And that's the way it is." To me, that encapsulates the newsman's highest ideal: to report the facts as he sees them, without regard for the consequences or controversy that may ensue.
-- Walter Cronkite

#Anchorman #Simple #Two

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.
-- Walter Cronkite

#Nice #Thinking #Guy

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.
-- Walter Cronkite

#Thinking #Definitions #Causes

I never had the ambition to be something. I had the ambition to do something.
-- Walter Cronkite

#Ambition #Ego #Becoming

The debates are part of the unconscionable fraud that our political campaigns have become a format that defies meaningful discourse. They should be charged with sabotaging the electoral process.
-- Walter Cronkite

#Meaningful #Political #Campaigns