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

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.

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

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.

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 read world literature and I read French romances in the originals. I had quite a profound knowledge - no, that sounds conceited, but I did have a profound interest in everything spiritual.

I'm reading more than ever. I used to find it tedious, but now it's like my little friend - it takes my mind off things.

I know Raft did have some genuine affairs with actresses.

The best speakers know enough to be scared…the only difference between the pros and the novices is that the pros have trained the butterflies to fly in formation.

Ambition and suspicion always go together.

...governments, including free and democratic governments, are not really friendly to freedom and democracy. They abhor any rule of law that limits their powers and penchant for social engineering.

You've just got to focus on excellence and try not to be distracted by the news and the rumors and the absurdities of the stories that were coming out.

It is a terrible thing to want something you cannot have. It takes you over. I couldn't think straight because of it. There was no one else, I realized, whom I could possibly tell.

Teachings that defy reason defy reality; what defies reality defies life. Defying life is embracing death.

Engineers use knowledge primarily to design, produce, and operate artifacts. ... Scientists, by contrast, use knowledge primarily to generate more knowledge.