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.
BILL MOYERSCharity depends on the vicissitudes of whim and personal wealth; justice depends on commitment instead of circumstance.
More Bill Moyers Quotes
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I approach the end of my own long run believing more strongly than ever that the quality of journalism and the quality of democracy are inextricably joined … .
BILL MOYERS -
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.
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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.
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When ideology and theology couple, their offspring are not always bad but they are always blind.
BILL MOYERS -
Standing up to your government can mean standing up for your country.
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Barack Obama seemed to think he could win over his enemies. He certainly seemed to believe too much in his own powers of persuasion. One thing’s for sure – he misunderstood the nature of his adversaries.
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Capitalism is out of control, thanks in no small part to Citizens United, the Supreme Court decision which said that a corporation is a person, even though it doesn’t eat, drink, make love, sing, raise children or take care of aging parents.
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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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There are honest journalists like there are honest politicians – they stay bought.
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Journalism’s been a continuing course in adult education for me.
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We see more and more of our Presidents and know less and less about what they do.
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How do we protect the soul of democracy against bad theology in service of an imperial state?
BILL MOYERS -
I’m the front man, I’m the man on camera, but there’s a whole team beyond me.
BILL MOYERS -
The 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.
BILL MOYERS -
When I was growing up, I never heard anyone pray, “Give me this day my daily bread.” It was always, “Give us this day our daily bread.” That stuck. We’re all in this together.
BILL MOYERS -
The quality of democracy and the quality of journalism are deeply entwined.
BILL MOYERS -
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 -
What’s right and good doesn’t come naturally. You have to stand up and fight for it – as if the cause depends on you, because it does.
BILL MOYERS -
Watching the debate this afternoon it was apparent they loved term limits in the House – as Brutus loved Caesar.
BILL MOYERS -
We don’t care really about children as a society and television reflects that indifference to children as human beings.
BILL MOYERS -
I hear an almost inaudible but pervasive discontent with the price we pay for our current materialism. And I hear a fluttering of hope that there might be more to life than bread and circuses.
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Ideas are great arrows, but there has to be a bow.
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I was not a public – I was not a thinker. I was a doer.
BILL MOYERS -
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 -
The thing about war is that once it’s triggered, it is unyielding in its appetite. And the more it consumes and gorges, the more it wants.
BILL MOYERS -
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