Good journalism should challenge people, not just mindlessly amuse them.

The pressure to compete, the fear somebody else will make the splash first, creates a frenzied environment in which a blizzard of information is presented and serious questions may not be raised.

The greatest felony in the news business today is to be behind, or to miss a big story. So speed and quantity substitute for thoroughness and quality, for accuracy and context.

You can't serve the public good without the truth as a bottom line.

The lowest form of popular culture - lack of information, misinformation, disinformation, and a contempt for the truth or the reality of most people's lives - has overrun real journalism.

I think all good reporting is the same thing - the best attainable version of the truth.

For the first time, the weird and the stupid and the coarse are becoming our cultural norms, even our cultural ideal.

Radical thought has inspired many of the great political and social reform movements in American history, from ending slavery to establishing the minimum wage.

Today, ordinary Americans are being stuffed with garbage.

The Congress is a dysfunctional institution; its broken. One of our three branches of government is broken.

There's something totally crazy about this.

I said, you're the beat of my heart, the breath in my body, the light in my soul.

Make no mistake, those who write long books have nothing to say.Of course those who write short books have even less to say.

Sometimes I fear those noisy words boiling in an unsettling cauldron.

Master of magic, god of war, Odin wanders alone.

I don't feel alone with you. I feel like I have a family and a home again. You're my home. All of the dark shadows seem to disappear when we're together.

Innocence most often is a good fortune and not a virtue.

Profundity and originality are attributes of single, if not singular, minds.

I think comics have far more potential than a lot of people realize.

There's no doubt that I respect the Second Amendment, that I also believe there's an individual right to bear arms. That is not in conflict with sensible, commonsense regulation.

But, is it possible for princes and ministers to be enlightened, when private individuals are not so?