“The most obvious drawback of social media is that they are aggressive distractions.”

Beating up on the so-called elite media has a nice populist ring to it.

My dad was an engineer, and he became the CEO of Chevron. His was an engineer’s mind-set: Everything’s kind of a problem how do you approach the problem?

It’s a considerable source of tragedy in the world that people stay in powerful jobs long past the point where they’re a spent force.

Every technology, including the printing press, comes at some price.

The curse of a journalist is that he always has more questions than answers.

Casual reliance on unnamed sources…corrodes our credibility and, in cases that are rare but not rare enough, may abet journalistic malpractice.

The queen of aggregation is, of course, Arianna Huffington, who has discovered that if you take celebrity gossip, adorable kitten videos, posts from unpaid bloggers and news reports from other publications, array them on your website and add a left-wing soundtrack, millions of people will come.

I do care if religious doctrine becomes an excuse to exclude my fellow citizens from the rights and protections our country promises.

Julian Assange, the WikiLeaks founder, has on several occasions talked about transparency as an absolute principle. I don’t personally believe that.

I make a joke that I’m the Internet curmudgeon, but ‘wary’ is a good way to put it.

Whether or not Twitter makes you stupid, it certainly makes some smart people sound stupid.

One of the most important disciplines in journalism is to challenge your working premises.

I may be the old-media id, but I think I may be entitled to some credit for being a new-media pioneer.

A vote for Mitt Romney is a vote for Satan.

Twitter and Facebook are brilliant- tools, the journalistic uses of which are still being plumbed. They are great for disseminating interesting material. They are useful for gathering information, including from places that are inaccessible.

Liberation movements – operating surreptitiously and conspiratorially – thrive on discipline and suspicion, and punish deviation or dissent.

When there are thoughts, it is distraction: when there are no thoughts, it is meditation.

If I’d known Ashton wanted my attention at any point I would have pushed Nicole aside and given her my undivided attention. But most of the time she was wrapped in Sawyer’s arms and I needed the distraction Nicole provided.

Meditation is sticking to one thought. That single thought keeps away other thoughts; distraction of mind is a sign of its weakness; by constant meditation it gains strength.

I don’t know how you were diverted, You were perverted too. I don’t know how you were inverted No one alerted you.

If I’m being honest, I was messing up on every other level in my life growing up – whether it was in school or in my jobs. I was always distracted by my love for music.

The desire to please other people is a potent way to distract yourself from what you are feeling.

I have a lot of great distractions outside of acting.

I attribute much of my success in New York to my ability to understand and avoid unnecessary distractions.