David Halberstam Quotes

The men were always wary of an officer who took form more seriously than function.

Officers came and went and were never a part of daily life.

There was, I found, always more to learn.

The faster the motion, the less time to think. Fuselage journalism, Hugh Sidey of Time later called it.

He was "more passionate than most intelligent men, and more intelligent and reasoned than most passionate men.

If the Times gave readers far more news, then Lippmann at the Trib made the world seem far more understandable.

(I. F. Stone had once called it an exciting paper to read because you never knew on what page you would find a page-one story),

Everyone else was trying to make things more complicated and Cronkite, typically, was trying to make them more simple.

The telephone was a sign of being rushed.

The author writes that the central conflict within journalist and seller of the American way Henry Luce was between his curiosity and his certitude.

he knew, unlike most reporters, how to use pauses and the absence of words as effectively as the words themselves.

he was so obsessed by the action in front of him that he had no awareness of the growing reaction to his performance.

Young man, Mr. Aubrey has made us so rich that we can now afford to worry about our image.

He seemed touched by a larger spirit, his course guided by something beyond him, so talented, so able, so good-natured that he did not even inspire envy in a city rich with envy.

It was the responsibility of a senior fireman to teach as well as to do.

In the old days, it had been talent and style and brilliance and now it was more and more productivity.

He was perceived to be intellectually promiscuous, a little too eager to please all groups.

[On writing:] "There's a great quote by Julius Irving that went, 'Being a professional is doing the things you love to do, on the days you don't feel like doing them.'", March 25, 2007.)

He could tune her, bringing out her better instincts and filtering out her lesser ones.