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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.

Bill Moyers

You do it because there’s a story to be told. I can tell you that the job of trying to tell the truth about people whose job it is to hide the truth is about as complicated and difficult as trying to hide it in the first place.
BILL MOYERS

Complicated Job People Told Truth Trying
Journalism’s been a continuing course in adult education for me.
BILL MOYERS

Adults Continuing Journalism
There are honest journalists like there are honest politicians – they stay bought.
BILL MOYERS

Honest Journalist Politician
I’ll believe corporations are people when Texas executes one
BILL MOYERS

Believe Country People
…there is no more effective public interest watchdog in Washington, D.C.
BILL MOYERS

Integrity Interest Public Interest
Television is a medium. It is neither rare nor well done.
BILL MOYERS

Done Fun Television
The fault line in American history is now a dividing line in the election and it’s changing the conversation.
BILL MOYERS

Country Election Fault History
Democracy only works when we claim it as our own.
BILL MOYERS

Allow Claims Democracy People
Democracy may not prove in the long run to be as efficient as other forms of government, but it has one saving grace: it allows us to know and say that it isn’t.
BILL MOYERS

Government Long Running
Here is the crisis of the times as I see it: We talk about problems, issues, policies, but we don’t talk about what democracy means – what it bestows on us.
BILL MOYERS

Issues Mean Revolutionary Ideas
When ideology and theology couple, their offspring are not always bad but they are always blind.
BILL MOYERS

Blind Couple Theology
America is the longest argument in the world.
BILL MOYERS

Argument Country World
Those rules divide the world into Democrats and Republicans, liberals and conservatives, and allow journalists to pretend they have done their job if instead of reporting the truth behind the news, they merely give each side an opportunity to spin the news.
BILL MOYERS

Done Journalist Reporting Truth
The President may not be listening, but the Senate is, and the public won this round. The House has a similar resolution under consideration.
BILL MOYERS

Consideration President Resolution Round
Charity depends on the vicissitudes of whim and personal wealth; justice depends on commitment instead of circumstance.
BILL MOYERS

Charity Circumstances Commitment Personal Wealth
In fact, so much of life, as you know, is serendipitous. That’s why you better be prepared at any time for anything, because it may happen to you.
BILL MOYERS

Facts May Prepared
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.
BILL MOYERS

Thinking Warrior Winning
Secrecy is the freedom tyrants dream of.
BILL MOYERS

Dream Freedom Tyrants
But what it meant in politics a century later, and still means today, is the freedom to accumulate wealth without social or democratic responsibilities and license to buy the political system right out from everyone else.
BILL MOYERS

Democratic Freedom Mean Political Social System Today
To the mind-set of Interpol tracking down master criminals through intense global cooperation among nations, or the FBI stalking the Mafia, or local police determined to quell street gangs without leveling the entire neighborhood in the process.
BILL MOYERS

Determine Embedded Moral Quiet Street
Yet 91 percent think it’s “not likely” that its influence will be lessened. Think about that: People know what’s right to do yet don’t think it can or will be done.
BILL MOYERS

Done Lessened Right Think
Fox News and Rush Limbaugh have raised ignorance to ideology and stupefied an entire political party. No more roguish and rowdy band of predators ever did more to demean and despoil the democracy on whose carcass they feed.
BILL MOYERS

Ignorance Party Political
Barack Obama strikes me as a man of strong principles and weak convictions – the kind of guy who would rather teach constitutional law than practice it, or who’d rather watch the match alone on TV than arm-wrestle his opponents.
BILL MOYERS

Country Law Men President Strong
I report the assault on nature evidenced in coal mining that tears the tops off mountains and dumps them into rivers, sacrificing the health and lives of those in the river valleys to short-term profit.
BILL MOYERS

Out Rivers Sacrifice Work
Although I was brought up in a culturally and religious conservative culture, as a Baptist I was taught that no one has the right to subpoena your conscience.
BILL MOYERS

Baptists Culture Religious
The rich today are richer, there are more of them, they have round-the-clock propaganda factories in Rupert Murdoch’s empire and rightwing talk radio, and corporate media have their back.
BILL MOYERS

Empires Media Radio
Unless you’re willing to fight and refight the same battles until you go blue in the face, drive the people you work with nuts going over every detail to make certain you’ve got it right, and then take hit after unfair hit accusing you of bias, there’s no use even trying.
BILL MOYERS

Blue Fighting Nuts

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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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.

Related Topics

Popular Authors

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