Walter Cronkite

It's hard for us to really understand the immensity so far of the conquest of space.

I wanted to have more time to play and reflect, but I find retirement more stressful than having a nice, steady job because I have to make decisions about where I want to be.

I had discovered journalism to be my life's ambition.

We have more and more one-newspaper towns, and that troubles me.

I think that the failure of newspaper competition in a community is a very serious handicap to the dissemination of the knowledge that the citizens need to participate in a democracy.

Part of the new morality of the '60s and '70s is a new attitude toward homosexuality. The homosexual men and women have organized to fight for acceptance and respectability.

I never took any elocution lessons, no diction lessons. I might have been a pretty decent broadcaster if I had, but what you see, I'm afraid, is what you get.

Anchormen shouldn't cry.

In the early stages of our involvement in Vietnam, basically I felt that our course was right. My concern grew with the concern of the American people.

I do think that the success, although still not complete... in the recognition of equal rights... to all Americans, regardless of color, creed and so forth, was also one of the best stories we've had to report.

I think there are a lot of good pieces that can be covered in 20 minutes that don't need an hour, but by the same token, there are things that need an hour or more.

I record it here today to establish my early predisposition to editorial work - to be both pontifical and wrong.

Cable has come along; many all-news 24 hour cable outlets in the United States. They have cut deeply into the traditional networks' viewing audience.

The military people don't like it; the government probably doesn't like it, but the people should know what they're sending their young people into when they permit their governments to declare war and engage in war.

No, I don't think my generation got into this dinosaur thing.

I've got a 12-year-old grandson who, when he was 3 years old, before he could say many other words, could name the different kinds of dinosaurs.

Under the Constitution, giving 'aid and comfort' to a wartime enemy can lead to a charge of treason.

Arianna Huffington has exercised her renowned wisdom to give journalism another boost along the ever busier Internet. Her blog site promises to be an interesting challenge for those of us lucky enough to be invited to participate with our occasional contributions.

I am joining the hundreds of thousands who shall be marching in the Virtual March on Washington to Stop Global Warming in order to demonstrate the concern that we all hold for the future of our planet and all the living things - flora, fauna, human and animal - that exist upon it.

We the people have the strength to bring our country from our weak-kneed stumbling gait in the last ranks of reason to the leadership of the great march to environmental victory.

With police wielding unprecedented powers to invade privacy, tap phones and conduct searches seemingly at random, our civil liberties are in a very precarious condition.

I do not consider a liberal necessarily to be a leftist.

I looked at the world with the humaneness, I think, which is one of the hallmarks of being liberal in my mind.

It's a little hard not to be an elitist when you're making millions of dollars a year.

I write pretty quickly. Write pretty fast. I was an old press service man. That was part of the necessity of that occupation.

For heaven's sakes, in the newspaper days, when we had competing newspapers, and the newsstands sale was as important as the circulation - as the agreed-upon circulation, whatever you call that - in those days, why, gosh, the sensationalism was tremendous.

I certainly think cameras ought to be in courtrooms.

I think cameras ought to be everywhere the reporters are allowed to go. I think, furthermore, reporters and cameras ought to be everywhere that the Constitution says the public can go.

I don't think it's in any way harmful, this marriage of media and politicians. I think it enhances the communications process considerably and makes it possible for the public to be far more aware, far more up-to-date on issues and the opposite sides of the issues.

Beyond being timely, an obituary has a more subjective duty: to assess its subject's impact.

I did not believe that the public was sophisticated enough to understand that a newsman could wear several hats and that we had the ability to turn off - nearly, you can't say perfectly, but nearly - all of our prejudices and biases.

All through my life, I have never disguised my sentiments about politics in general.

I miss particularly the managing editor role on the 'Evening News.'

Helping set the day's agenda and deciding what we used and editing it, that was a journalistic high point. I liked reporting as well. Just doing the news - the live performance - wasn't important. Working on the desk was.

I'm so tired of stories starting, 'Maud Jones was walking her dog down Broadway.' You've got to go over to the back page somewhere to finally find out the damn dog was run over by a truck. Get the thing told, for heaven's sake. Everybody doesn't have to be an O. Henry.

We have overcome some terrible blows to our democracy, to the future of our democracy, to the future of our nation. We survived the Civil War and the strife that tore this nation apart.

The civil rights fight was a very important fight.

A lot of the questions raised about television's power and influence on events have applied throughout history to every mass-communications medium - most particularly print, because that's the medium we've had the longest.

I can't go into a mob scene and sense the mood and the attitude of the crowd. I can't conduct man-on-the-street interviews or even get reactions that I can be sure are honest, because they know who I am.

I suppose popularity is measured by ratings. If a broadcaster is known as the leader because of ratings, then that's where people most want to be seen and heard, so there's no question that there's an advantage.

Anybody who's spent thirteen or fourteen years in print journalism has a lot of stories he thinks were inwardly satisfying as far as preparation, understanding, and diligence.

We all have our likes and our dislikes. But... when we're doing news - when we're doing the front-page news, not the back page, not the op-ed pages, but when we're doing the daily news, covering politics - it is our duty to be sure that we do not permit our prejudices to show. That is simply basic journalism.

The very first time a politician puts you in his target is sometimes a disappointment, because perhaps you thought you were friends and getting along well... But it is not something that you dwelled on. At least, I did not.

When I stepped down from the evening news at the age of 65, in '81, things were still going well. Immediately after that, the whole tenor of the CBS News Department changed.

I don't believe in these headline-hunting interviews. That's just not my style.

Advertising's always been a considerable pressure on publishers.

You think you would react one way when a situation develops and, and when the sharp shells are flying, you don't quite stand up like you think you might.

Maybe I'm just a slow learner or something, but I like to have things laid out as plainly and simply as possible.

I can swear on a stack of Bibles that not once in doing the 'CBS Evening News' for 19 years - well, I take it back. Once perhaps. But during 19 years, with perhaps one exception, was I ever aware of any political or commercial pressure on that broadcast whatsoever.

The whole period of the '60s changed a lot of us; there was never a decade like that in American history... to have the decade capture one of the great accomplishments of this century: man landing on the moon.