Journalism’s been a continuing course in adult education for me.
BILL MOYERSThe struggle of ordinary people for a decent living, for security, is as old as the republic, but it’s taken on a new and urgent edge. Instead of shared prosperity our political system has now produced a winner-take-all economy.
More Bill Moyers Quotes
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The President may not be listening, but the Senate is, and the public won this round. The House has a similar resolution under consideration.
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Creativity is piercing the mundane to find the marvelous.
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Our children are being raised by appliances.
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Freedom begins the moment you realize someone else has been writing your story and it’s time you took the pen from his hand and started writing it yourself.
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People who don’t believe in government are likely to defy our government.
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Charity depends on the vicissitudes of whim and personal wealth; justice depends on commitment instead of circumstance.
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Having lost faith in all else, zealots have nothing left but a holy cause to please a warrior God. They win if we become holy warriors, too; if we kill the innocent as they do; strike first at those who had not struck us.
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When a library is open, no matter its size or shape, democracy is open, too.
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Journalists who make mistakes get sued for libel; historians who make mistakes get to publish a revised edition.
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Jon Stewart is a remarkable satirist and parodist in the vein of Mark Twain, because Jon Stewart understands what Mark Twain knew, which is that the truth goes down more easily in a democracy when it’s marinated in humor.
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War, except in self-defense, is a failure of moral imagination.
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The most encouraging sign is that 71 percent of the public believe the system is profoundly corrupted by the power of money. Ninety-six percent of the people believe it’s “important” that we reduce the influence of money.
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Scientists investigate that which already is; Engineers create that which has never been. Creativity is piercing the mundane to find the marvelous.
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I was not a public – I was not a thinker. I was a doer.
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I take “We, the People” seriously because I don’t know how we build a civilization without reciprocity.
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Charity is commendable; everyone should be charitable. But justice aims to create a social order in which, if individuals choose not to be charitable, people still don’t go hungry, unschooled or sick without care.
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Conservatism is less a set of ideas than it is a pathological distemper, a militant anger over the fact that the universe is not closed and life is not static.
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Television can stir emotions, but it doesn’t invite reflection as much as the printed page.
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Our great progressive struggles have been waged to make sure ordinary citizens, and not just the rich and privileged, share in the benefits of a free society.
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Although our interests as citizens vary, each one is an artery to the heart that pumps life through the body politic, and each is important to the health of democracy.
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News is what people want to keep hidden and everything else is publicity.
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This “degenerate and unlovely age,” as one historian calls it, exists in the mind of Karl Rove the reputed brain of George W. Bush as the seminal age of inspiration for politics and governance of America today.
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Our economy is a plantation run for the aristocrats – the CEOs, hedge funds, private equity firms – while the field hands are left with the scraps.
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Lyndon Johnson believed the poor deserved a better life than the economy was providing them. He thought private power and greed had to be checked by a vibrant democracy.
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If the watchdog doesn’t bark, how do you know there’s a burglar in the basement? And the press is supposed to be a watchdog.
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Charity depends on the vicissitudes of whim and personal wealth; justice depends on commitment instead of circumstance. Faith-based charity provides crumbs from the table; faith-based justice offers a place at the table.
BILL MOYERS