Most of them [American politicians] are men of undoubted charm, ability, and incredible energy, and yet too often they lack purpose or appetite for anything beyond their own careers. With few notable exceptions, they are simply men who want to be loved.

I have always been on the side of the heretics, against those who burned them, because the heretics so often turned out to be right....Dead, but right.

We must not confuse dissent with disloyalty. We must remember always that accusation is not proof and that conviction depends upon evidence and due process of law. We will not walk in fear, one of another.

I would like television to produce some itching pills rather than this endless outpouring of tranquilizers.

We have currently a built-in allergy to unpleasant or disturbing information. Our mass media reflect this. But unless we get up off our fat surpluses and recognize that television in the main is being used to distract, delude, amuse, and insulate us, then television and those who finance it, those who look at it, and those who work at it, may see a totally different picture too late.

If radio news is to be regarded as a commodity, only acceptable when saleable, then I don't care what you call it - I say it isn't news.

Language is one of the greatest gifts man has devised for himself. It ranks, alongside the discovery of fire and the wheel, as a major influence in making modern man what he is today.