Most people don't realize that two-thirds of the federal budget is Social Security, Medicare, Medicaid, and the Pentagon. The U.S. government is an insurance company with an Army.

There is no democracy without journalism.

The country is only as strong as its journalism - that's the way democracies work. The higher the quality of the information, the better informed the electorate is and the better the government runs.

We have entered a time when a writer's first idea is his best idea, when the first thing a reporter hears is the first thing that she reports. We live in a time now when we have seen major television networks take video off of YouTube and broadcast it to millions of Americans without verifying whether the video had been fabricated or not.

You have to take risks on policy. You can't be a politician, wringing your hands, worried about what the public opinion polls are saying or worried about the negative attacks. If you believe in something, go fight for it.

Twitter, Facebook and Reddit, that’s not journalism. That's gossip. Journalism was invented as an antidote to gossip.

Democracies succeed or fail based on their journalism. America is strong because its journalism is strong. That is how democracies work. They're only as good as the quality of the information that the public possesses and that is where we come in.